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Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

usatoday.com

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Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#31

Post by Grishnakh »

greglindahl wrote: post #28
whyenot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Some people" in this care are the Competitive Space Task Force, a "coalition of leading conservative and libertarian thinkers from organizations committed to creating a free and competitive market for U.S. spaceflight" . As one would expect from an organization with that particular point of view, they believe the SLS is a complete boondoggle and private industry should do the work. I wish there were a more neutral s…

NASA paid SpaceX & OSC in advance to produce cost-effective vehicles that NASA then bought. Paying in advance to create new products like this is a standard commercial transaction, and it saved NASA a lot of money compared to buying what was already available, according to NASA. Sounds like you don't want to fund space at all, but that's a different discussion.

It's not even unique. NASA didn't even build the F-5 rocket engines that sent men to the Moon; Rocketdyne did. That's the way government contracting has pretty much always worked. The government typically does a bunch of R&D work, and works with commercial companies to actually build things, especially in quantity.

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#32

Post by zbyte64 »

hacker42 wrote: post #25
bpodgursky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've sent robots to Mars and the photos show it's just dust. We sent boats into the Atlantic, it turns out it's just water. Guess there's no point looking any farther.

Yes, I think the same about deep sea exploration.

Ya, because who needs to know about exotic microbes living in extreme conditions at the bottom of the ocean. /s

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#33

Post by akiselev »

hacker42 wrote: post #20

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but space exploration strikes me as a waste of money and energy. The universe is clearly no good for space travel, otherwise we would witness aliens visiting us. It's empty and hostile. This planet is the only realistic long-term home. Sure, space stuff gets kids into science, but I wonder how many more kids we would get into science by investing billions of dollars in education instead. We…

Luckily for all you cynics, NASA has a page made just for you! Just go to https://spinoff.nasa.gov and marvel at the literally thousands of technologies that have filtered down to society for a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Hydro/aeroponics, artificial limbs, roads, baby formula, firefighter gear, airplanes, cordless vacuums, water purification, solar cells, GPS, and simulation software is but a tiny list of the things made possible or greatly improved by NASA research and funding.

No other organization on this planet has done more to bring different scientists together with ample funding and an inspirational mandate. Biologists, physicist, material scientists, engineers, and even sociologists have come together under one roof resulting in a dizzying list of technologies that would have taken much longer to hit the market or never made at all. NASA is a multidisciplinary research and technology powerhouse unrivaled in human history. Space is just what brought everyone together.

But maybe I'm biased ;)

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#34

Post by elif »

akiselev wrote: post #33
hacker42 wrote: post #20

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but space exploration strikes me as a waste of money and energy. The universe is clearly no good for space travel, otherwise we would witness aliens visiting us. It's empty and hostile. This planet is the only realistic long-term home. Sure, space stuff gets kids into science, but I wonder how many more kids we would get into science by investing billions of dollars in education instead. We…

Luckily for all you cynics, NASA has a page made just for you! Just go to https://spinoff.nasa.gov and marvel at the literally thousands of technologies that have filtered down to society for a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Hydro/aeroponics, artificial limbs, roads, baby formula, firefighter gear, airplanes, cordless vacuums, water purification, solar cells, GPS, and simulation software is but a tiny list of t…

But would NASA out-perform a research university with the same budget, tasked with addressing the aforementioned problem/solutions directly rather than incidentally?

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#35

Post by akiselev »

elif wrote: post #34
akiselev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily for all you cynics, NASA has a page made just for you! Just go to https://spinoff.nasa.gov and marvel at the literally thousands of technologies that have filtered down to society for a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Hydro/aeroponics, artificial limbs, roads, baby formula, firefighter gear, airplanes, cordless vacuums, water purification, solar cells, GPS, and simulation software is but a tiny list of t…

But would NASA out-perform a research university with the same budget, tasked with addressing the aforementioned problem/solutions directly rather than incidentally?

Yes. NASA is drastically different from an academic institution and the difference in administrative culture alone allows it to be a more effective multidisciplinary research organization working on everything from pure science to industrial ready technologies. For example, Black and Decker developed the first cordless vacuum after their engineers got an idea while working on cordless drills with NASA in the same research center where they were working on Apollo 11+ and photovoltaics. Universities are simply not made for this purpose, since they focus on basic research and education.

Furthermore, much of NASA's success is due to the mix of scientists from different fields, universities, and business working on one problem. When the best of the best come together, it results in a cross polinatiom of ideas. It's not just being in the same building or sharing a cafeteria while working on disparate grants, but a day to day sharing of knowledge to tackle a single problem.

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#36

Post by mturmon »

hacker42 wrote: post #20

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but space exploration strikes me as a waste of money and energy. The universe is clearly no good for space travel, otherwise we would witness aliens visiting us. It's empty and hostile. This planet is the only realistic long-term home. Sure, space stuff gets kids into science, but I wonder how many more kids we would get into science by investing billions of dollars in education instead. We…

What happened to Venus is a pretty good motivator for sustainability and limiting global warming, no?

How about the Earth-observing satellites that are monitoring key environmental variables (http://oco2.jpl.nasa.gov), or the exoplanet spectroscopy studies that will see how common different atmospheres are (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/) ?

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#37

Post by zbyte64 »

elif wrote: post #34
akiselev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily for all you cynics, NASA has a page made just for you! Just go to https://spinoff.nasa.gov and marvel at the literally thousands of technologies that have filtered down to society for a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Hydro/aeroponics, artificial limbs, roads, baby formula, firefighter gear, airplanes, cordless vacuums, water purification, solar cells, GPS, and simulation software is but a tiny list of t…

But would NASA out-perform a research university with the same budget, tasked with addressing the aforementioned problem/solutions directly rather than incidentally?

Think of how many prerequisite advancements are needed for deploying GPS. Now task a team with developing only GPS but not anything that might enable safer launches or better solar cells in space. They eventually develop a GPS solution but in order for it to be as good as what we got they would need to be part of a group full of interdisciplinary teams that would look allot like NASA.

Or if you prefer a programming analogy, what if all software teams only built what they were explicitly tasked for and could not collaborate on the tools used. Managers _might_ get their deliverables faster but I suspect by not developing tools incidentally we leave out future productivity gains.

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#38

Post by zbyte64 »

mturmon wrote: post #36
hacker42 wrote: post #20

Perhaps I'm a bit cynical, but space exploration strikes me as a waste of money and energy. The universe is clearly no good for space travel, otherwise we would witness aliens visiting us. It's empty and hostile. This planet is the only realistic long-term home. Sure, space stuff gets kids into science, but I wonder how many more kids we would get into science by investing billions of dollars in education instead. We…

What happened to Venus is a pretty good motivator for sustainability and limiting global warming, no? How about the Earth-observing satellites that are monitoring key environmental variables ( http://oco2.jpl.nasa.gov ), or the exoplanet spectroscopy studies that will see how common different atmospheres are ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/habex/ ) ?

Those pesky observations are why planetary science funding got cut.

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#39

Post by SEJeff »

Animats wrote: post #26

At least they want to fund the Commercial Crew project. Space-X should have sent a manned Dragon capsule to the ISS by now. There seems to be political pressure to hold them back until ULA can catch up. (Space-X now claims they know why they had a pad explosion. They're saying "breach in the helium system".[1] But what caused that? What part has to be changed? This just came out a few hours ago, so the details are la…

Word on the street (read r/SpaceX) is it was caused by a failing COPV.

Re: Senate panel authorizes money for Mars mission, shuttle replacement

#40

Post by douche »

elif wrote: post #34
akiselev wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily for all you cynics, NASA has a page made just for you! Just go to https://spinoff.nasa.gov and marvel at the literally thousands of technologies that have filtered down to society for a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Hydro/aeroponics, artificial limbs, roads, baby formula, firefighter gear, airplanes, cordless vacuums, water purification, solar cells, GPS, and simulation software is but a tiny list of t…

But would NASA out-perform a research university with the same budget, tasked with addressing the aforementioned problem/solutions directly rather than incidentally?

Nasa doesn't have publish-or-perish.
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