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

The fact of the matter is that by the early 80's, the multi-billion dollar albatross was being used for the "Teacher in Space" program , this should probably clue you in as to its ultimate research value.

I'm not even going to waste my time, but if you think I'm the only person who believes the space shuttle was a pretty stupid boodoggle, it's probably not even worth taking the time.

Uh, yeah. YOu need to read the article. Here is what the takeaway is:

1. there is an (expensive) micro-g environment at JSC in which some cancer cell research is being performed and cells are being manufactured (i assume this is pretty tangential research, seeing as neither you nor I had heard of it until you unearthed it via google a decade later yesterday).

2. The reason why this research is being done at JSC is because it is too expensive and unwieldy to do it in space.

3. This research is intended to find out if they can obtain an incrementally better result in space than at JSC, thus obviating the current expensive land-based micro g environment and justifying a big expensive microgravity bioengineering facility in space. (which has not been done and which nobody really wants or needs)

PS - Since this research was conceived about 10 YEARS AGO - can you tell me what the outcome is? I mean your prime candidate for valuable research is an extremely expensive, tangential bit of applied research in space...that is about the viability of other applied research...which then may be used to justify what exactly? Other than an expensive bioengineering facility that nobody wants or needs... you're not really making me recant my argument that most of NASA's manned spaceflight research of late is circular at best and disingenuous at worst.

$500 million dollars buys a lot of cancer research. Or it buys some very marginal research and sending a bunch of people on a tin can into low earth orbit.

 

That was ISS for about 10 years before congress finally signed on. Same ol', same ol'.


Look, I'm not trying to be mean about it. From a "save us from our defecit" standpoint, Cx is peanuts and goofy to cancel. But a lot of Cx was just plain flawed design. Some of that was political, some was inevitable thanks to ISS requirements, but a lot was just plain bad engineering (the 1.5 architecture is just plain terrible). From that standpoint I'm not too upset about this - I always thought a downsizing of the program was, at a minimum, inevitable.

 

You know the inner desires of the administration ... how exactly?

They didn't have to. Looking at the big picture, administrations have different priorities from month to month sometimes, much less from administration to administration. Our short term (and even medium term) budget issues are very large and very real and this administration is trying to address them. If we end up in a boom like at the end of the Clinton administration, they may very well put more funding into NASA. If the next admin is more NASA friendly, they might reinstate Constellation. You are seizing on a short term budget move to try and claim that the sky is falling, which just isn't the case.

Maybe that will happen, maybe we will find out that there is harvest-able energy on the Moon, maybe Pete Olson and KBH will flip on healthcare to get Constellation reinstated (that one was just for laughs), maybe the next administration will place a higher priority on manned space exploration, etc. You are proclaiming doom and gloom because NASA didn't get a budget increase, which is hyperbolic at best.

 

I think you are defending the Shuttle program for it's unique ability to shuttle things (apparently not astronauts though -- the Russkies do that even if companies here are offering to do it at half the cost) to the ISS. I don't think you are quite grasping what my criticism is. It's not that I think the ISS could be served better by another shuttle. It's that I think the ISS and Shuttle are bad programs that are never going to produce results that merit the expense.

I think you are making some ridiculous assertions in defense of your job, such as "How about you provide an experiment that was done in space that had no business being done in space?" You asked, I answered. You got nothing to say back except to ridiculously assert that I didn't answer the question.

Oh and just so's ya know I googled the Space Shuttle, not "why ISS sucks." This is why the article is talking about the Space Shuttle, not the ISS.

And my ignorant ass is gonna try another google, just cuz you liked the last one so much:

Here's what I find when googling "Space Shuttle Program Cost." Oh lookey, from Space.Com :

Now, Pielke is merely Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, not some midlevel NASA functionary. I'm sure his opinion holds no weight with you either since NASA ain't paying his paycheck.

But nah, the shuttle system was perfectly administered. No critique there.

 

So are you saying that this particular experiment was created in order to justify (at an incremental level) the Space Shuttle and ISS programs? Again, the fact that this research is something nobody reallly wants or needs is your opinion that is based on what?

Ok see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Magnetic_Spectrometer
This payload would never make it to space on your [insert spaceship here]. Only the shuttle can take it. The launch of this payload was canceled because of reduction of shuttle flights. But luckily congress provided additional funding to add STS-134 to the manifest. Now the project costs balloned due to technical issues of the project, not due to the fact that shuttle was going to carry it or it was going to the ISS (just in case you try to twist this somehow ). Can you say that this experiment/project was created to keep shuttle/iss going?

Now I've provided you another experiment. The first I showed you've dismissed it as a waste based on your own presumptions. Your point #2 is not based on facts as I don't see it in the article or any other article (please correct me if I'm wrong with a link or quote). Let's see how you dismiss the AMS payload.

However, I do agree that some experiments were considered more valid due to the fact that we have the Shuttle/ISS, but doesn't mean they would have been rejected otherwise. They may very well been have launched on a delta rocket instead with much less interface capability.

 

Which is the way it was designed - on purpose- to justify the shuttle/ISS existence. Just like Hubble was designed to be manually serviced.

Precisely - that's what happens when you don't design products to be intentionally less efficient in order to justify continuous cash flow to your unreliable, multibillion dollar space bus and space bus station.

PS I take it you never ran down the results of that important cancer research?

 

note: I quoted you from 2 seperate posts and those are points I wanted to address.

You said "testing scent of roses in space". That's the bombshell you dropped for your argument? That's your answer? I'd actually like to take a look at this experiment. Please provide a link.

About you making a connection to some kind of defense of my job, you really think I can save my job by debating about it with YOU of all people? What's done is done. What use would it give me to try to show you otherwise? I'm relatively young in the space industry and my skill set can be applied to other industries. Not being over-confident but just being hopeful. Although you probably won't believe me, I am in no way justifying my job. I am in genuine support of U.S. manned space exploration and am defending it here as such. This is the D&D and my rep here isn't one that is can be remotely paralleled with likes of Basso. I have no agenda, just trying to have an insightful debate.

Look, just because I am very pro-NASA doesn't mean that you are forced to post a jerk reply.

Also, please re-read the reponse (post #288) about the iPhone comparison. I did not say ISS > iPhone. I was talking in terms of investment into mainstay projects for an govt entity and drawing a parallel to the commercial sector.(see your reponses like this make me think you're just full of ****, you took my reponse way out of context, no where did I mention anything about ISS being as popular as iPhone, it doesn't even make sense to say that, just one of those things I'm sitting here and thinking 'WTF are you going on about').

 

For those interested, via using Google Scholar, I found only this article (pdf) from Physics Reports to hail from the ISS *and* have more than 100 citations in other articles (e.g. in influenced the work of that many other publications.)

Physics Reports is not bad -- it has about half the impact factor of, say, the journal Nature.

The paper in question relates to particle physics, and I cannot tell how the device needed to be on ISS instead of a regular satellite, but I haven't read the whole thing.

There are a bunch of articles, but most of them have fewer than 20 citations.

In sum, if you measured the ISS as if it was a single scientist, it would get tenure for sure, and be considered a very productive single scientist, but it would probably not be promoted to Full Professor at a Research I university, due to having only one high-impact paper.

 

That's one way to think about it. What about the increased cost of making it more efficient by automating the operation of the AMS? The cost of automating it and putting it on a delta rocket would exceed the cost of adapting it to the shuttle. See below

No but have you ran down the results of that cancer research and prove to me that it was a complete waste?
How about you provide me what facts you have to backup your 3-point conclusion and I'll go look up the results of this project. It's very convinient for you to have me go dig up facts just so you can dispute them with your opinion.

 

Qazi,

Seriously, I don't want to be an a-hole. But let me try to help you.

Qazi says:

"NASA had a great plan for a reusable craft with flexible capability. The idea to have a shuttle fleet that could then service a major orbitting space station would allow, for instance, for the construction of new space craft in orbit, that could then venture further into the solar system. Such a station would also serve for further longitudinal studies that would be needed (we thought in the 1970's) for further work on the moon or for a Mars mission.

In this way, the basic fundamental concept was indeed ambitious and not just a concept to win congressional funding. If it had a long view, it is only because a long view was needed for the next steps of human exploration of space.

In the end, with sustenance-level (but far under requested) budgets and an externally applied decrease of project scope, NASA achieved a fleet and a station, but with less of the original capability and fewer of the original goals. It was never designed for fundamental and critical science, beyond experiments to further study habitats in space.

I am Qazi, I defend the ISS, the shuttle fleet, and I realize its outcome did not meet the original ambition, but it's not NASA's fault. Political realities limited NASA -- it was not a limited NASA designed for political realities."

 

Really? That's odd, because dozens, if not hundreds, of satellites every year are sent up into low earth orbit every year without using the space bus, at much lower cost. Of course - this naturally begs the question as to why NASA designed it to be launched in the space bus in the first place . . . . Oh yes, I forgot, there's 500 million reasons to do so...every single time.

Uh the "facts" I got are from the 10-year old article you provided. But
if you don't know what the outcome of the experiment was, why did you post it in order to cite it as an example of an important research project?

You act like I'm the first person to have ever had these criticisms - not even close.

 

Note: The second post wasn't from me. You may want to restrict your criticism of me to things I actually said. Dan B. never compared the ISS to Apple. That was B-Bob. Perhaps before you rag on me for not reading your Italian pdf you could actually read who wrote these comments?

enjoy

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/features/spacescents_feature.html

You are thinking that because I never went on about it. You are inventing words and putting them in my mouth. No wonder you are confused and outraged at me. I keep saying the worst things you can invent for me to say!

I took your response out of context? At least I didn't take another poster's words and pretend you said them.

Pretty funny how I'm full of **** when I am the only one of us two who is responding to the words you actually wrote.

 

Insisting that only people employed to build the Shuttle are qualified to opine upon it is like insisting that only assembly line workers can opine on GM. It's a bull**** argument that you are resorting to because you don't have a real one.

 

Oh the Japanese perfume manufacturer that was funding these experiments on the Space Shuttle and ISS that are so critical for the future of humanity are kind enough to sell their space perfume if you want some. Nice huh? Good to see my tax dollars promoting Japanese perfume companies.

http://idb.exst.jaxa.jp/edata/02497/pdf/STJ85-11.pdf

 

Actually, I was quoting Qazi's analogy to Apple.

Not really. But whatever.

 

When did I attribute something someone else said to Qazi?

Read this post. He clearly says that the second line was from my post. He says "I quoted you from two separate posts" in fact (changed to correct a misspelling). It wasn't. It is the first paragraph of this post, which you wrote:

Qazi said I wrote something that I never wrote. In fact he quoted both me and you, then erased your name to make it appear that I wrote that when I didn't. Was this due to malicousness? Or just stupidity? Guess he figured I can't remember what I said a day ago since I'm no shuttle engineer or anything.

 

I see what you were getting at. I apologize for saying you compared the two products B-Bob. You were mocking him for doing so, which was obvious in the statement (the word "really?" at the end is kind of a hint). I did not mean to misinterpret your point. I don't think I was arguing for or against it, in fact. I never got into the Apple/ISS thing. That is my point. Qazi needs to address the people who are actually arguing what he wants to argue. He argues my point that the Shuttle was a waste of money (like the ISS) by pointing out that the Shuttle is invaluable at getting things to the ISS. He assumes that one finds data on the Space Shuttle by googling the ISS. IN short, he is very bad at actually responding to the points others make. I have no problems with you, however, and I am sorry if I came across as having any.

 

I understand your debate here wan't change your job status but I can't help but feel that your job situation is very much coloring your opinion of the subject. Possibly losing a good job that you clearly believe in obviously sucks so I can understand your view. If I can offer you some advice from having been where you are while in the short term this seems like a bad thing this also might give you a chance to do somethings as interesting in the private field possibly at one of the startups. You might find that being free of the bureaucractic constraints of NASA you might the work even more exciting than what you did before.

Just my two cents.

For what its worth I think you've been pretty civil.

 

Actually if you click through and do some research, the patented ASTROCULTURE^TM technology is fully automated. All the astronauts do is pick up the box that its stored in and put it in another spot.