Obama Wants to Destroy Manned Spaceflight?

You're kind of preaching to the choir. I'd privatize the whole agency or at least every part that doesn't directly relate to National Defense. Still, if I had a big list of wasteful and un-Constitutional bureaucracies in front of me, NASA would be way down the list of things to cut. In fact, the Department of Education where Obama wants to redirect the funds might be the first to go.

 

Do you have any idea how far the earth is from the moon? A much more effective way to control Earth space is from 1. Earth or 2. Earth space

 

education is as big of a national security concern as any. too many people think in terms of cost/reward in terms of dollars when it comes to education when they should be thinking about this in terms of NASA. also it always is funny how many die hard conservative who preach pulling yourself up by the boot straps don't want to fund something that can help like education.

how can education dollars be misdirected, if you put computers in schools, give more incentive for smart people to teach, etc?

 

Please do.

Again you keep claiming this without having presented a single shred of evidence, but I guess the myth keeps you rolling. Like the people who talk about how all scientists in the 1970's believed in global cooling. It didn't happen, but why let reality get in the way of a good narritive rant?

I genuinely really had no idea what you were intending to write. I have thought it would be "But times have changed, man". Using "Man" an interjection in that location doesn't naturally occur to me, so I apologize. In any case, I don't think times have changed at all. The shuttle was not a money maker and was never intended to earn money by flying passengers to the space station for holidays. So time hasn't changed, the situations are fundamentally different.

But nice with the personal attacks and attempt at ridicule. That always helps. Bluster & retreat?

 

I completely support funding of public education. It's nationalization of that public education that I'm against.

 

I suspect that you are not particularly qualified to talk on Lagrange points since the standard nomenclature for referring to them would be L1 & L2.

 

What a dumb platform to trot out -- sounds like Obama is getting desperate.

 

Google the phrase "space hotel" - these plans are not new. Nor are any number of other grandiose plans that were prominent in the day - Everybody envisioned the ISS as the first step - when in actuality it hasn't really resulted in much of anything.

Like your evidence that we're builiding a lunar gas station to mine nickel on asteroids? Last time I checked NASA said that we were builiding one to go to Mars, and the lunar resources we plan on using will be used to support such endeavors as - the MOONBASE!

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/04/moon.base/index.html


This plan is about as close to your ideas as the ISS is to the Death Star.

 

I wasn't talking abou LaGrange points, I was talking about numbering items within a sentence like this 1 (item) 2 (item).

Are you being dense like this on purpose to impress us with your knowledge of Lagrange points, or just be an asshat?

Good job if so.

 

Did it. Nothing like what you claimed I would find. Nothing at all having anything to do with the shuttle or ISS, actually. Is that an admission of defeat, or did you not actually do it yourself?

 

I would've liked it better if he called to privatize NASA, but then he would sound too Republican. I think private spacefaring will be most responsible in revitalizing the public's imagination. I can't even count the number of shuttle flights in the past year...two? I don't think many people are buzzed about manned spaceflights for the amount of money we put in it.

 

Whats wrong Otto, you don't have any more grammar smack you could toss out?

that's funny, cause I googled it and I found thousands of results related to space hotels. Are you honestly doubting that all sorts of pipe dream ideas - like your lunar gas station - were not pitched to justify the ISS and the space station? What makes you think this?

 

They were not a subject of feasibility studies on either the ISS or Space Shuttle. There is a lot of stuff about what corporations want to do in the future, but I don't really see how that is relevant.

And by all means keep with the name calling. I’m sure it’s cathartic. Any other epithets you want to throw out there? I heard my nephew call his sister a poo-poo head once. At the time she seemed devastated, you might want to give that a try.

 

proof?

 

Good point, and when people see, they want to be there.

Private industry will be the only way flights will become cheap and widespread enough for the general public, but I think people will assume/demand the government will regulate the heck out of it to make things safe, which would set us back in economies of scale and stifled innovation. A little recklessness and a strong desire for adventure would leapfrog NASA's accomplishments in no time.

 

It is impossible to prove a negative. I think that that is a fairly well accepted truism.

 

Think Star Wars, Sam. Laser and particle beam weapons are already here. From the moon, zapping military and communications satellites as well as space stations -- and perhaps ground stations -- would be fairly easy. Granted, we are a few years away from effective weapons, but so are the first lunar stations.

Remember, we've been measuring the distance between the Earth and moon using laser beams bouncing off half dollar-sized targets for about 40 years.

 

So it is your position that - in the entire 70's and 80's and 90's, while lobbying for the Space Shuttle and ISS - not once, not a single time did anybody envision/plan/attempt to argue that the Space Shuttle and ISS would lead to anything bigger and better? Never? Nothing? Like Orbital assembly or space tethers or space docks or solar wind sails or giant solar plants or giant UV shields? At least not to the point of having a mighty feasibility study? Never? Ever? Ever?

I don't have the time or the inclination to review the microfilm at the local library or scour the congressional record, and I don't even care to go on a google chase to settle an internet bet with you - but you pride yourself on your logic, obviously and I think your assumption to the above makes you seriously lose credibility.

The only difference between the billion dollar tin cans orbiting the earth at this point and the billiion dollar tin cans NASA plans to send to the moon that I can see is that you claim yours have an honest-to-goodness feasibility study about building space mine gas stations to extract nickel from asteroids.

Yes, and we do that here and not 93 million miles away. Why bother building a death ray on the moon when you can build one in your backyard? - assuming of course you want to build one at all. The days of the moon as a planetary defense system seem centuries away, I'm assigning that one an even lower priority.

 

Again, I'm not talking about lobbying. Maybe you don't understand what a feasibility study is. I'm putting numbers down on paper that can be defended in peer review. Declarations that x can be done for y amounts of dollars based on z known engineering principals with q amount of variability in that estimate. Nobody put hard numbers to any of those things. Yes. That is what I am saying.