Like most of you, I spent the weekend reading the full, 157-page text of the final report on the future of space exploration that NASA's Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee released last week. Having done so, I'm sure we share the same disappointments: No manned launch until 2017, Ares rocket underpowered, Orion capsule too big, trajectory of entire current U.S. program "unstable" due to lack of funding from congress, etc. The biggest problem, though, is that NASA doesn't seem to have a clue about what is so clearly the future of space exploration: flying laser hockey bears.
Monday, October 26, 2009
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Pretty bummed about the ~6 year US human spaceflight gap, too!
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a bear on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.
A twink would be more feasible.
i am bummed out.
why does NASA still exist again? i'd rather we not go to mars. i'd rather we pay ridiculous sums to intrepid explorers who go to unforgiving lands and teach the kids there to read.
NASA serves three roles: a national prestige project, a national spectator sport, and a conduit of funding for engineering and science. Personally, I feel all three of these goals are laudable to varying extents, but even if you don't you should realize that the federal budget is not a zero-sum game. If NASA's small budget ($17.3 billion) was cut to zero (putting tens of thousands of people out of work, btw) there is no reason to believe that that money would go to humanitarian causes. Iraq eats that much money in a month, after all.
Microwave ovens. Those illiterate kids would never eat if it weren't for microwave ovens and Tang.
Calling Astronauts illiterate is just a cheap shot.
There is nothing to read on Mars anyway.
It ain't the kind of place to raise a kid, that's for sure. In fact, it's cold as hell.
You know who does send people into space regularly? The Russians. Who won the space race again?
I knew we shouldn't have let PanAm go under.
I fucking hate NASA. They get billions and billions year to spend on research which no expectation that anything of real worth is gotten in return.
That should leave them a free hand in doing the coolest shit ever but they piss it up the wall on boring crap. Where the fuck is the mecha? They need to spend a little less on researching dust particles or whatever and more on a spaceship that actually looks futuristic and doesnt blow up most of the time