NASA: Love is Over Barak Obama

[Kryssan]

Can someone explain to me how in a rush we got onto the moon 40 years ago, but they are having trouble with the new Ares rocket. Is it lack of funding?

Y'know how the word 'terrorism' promotes certain reactions nowadays? Same principle.



AFAIK from what I've read/been told Ares suffers from the same problem that DDX and the EMR of the Ford suffer from. One of the reasons I'm actually for private enterprise going into space, despite my earlier post sarcasm, but I don't think that alone is reason for the government to step down from it.

[dudeguy]

We need to get to the moon so we can start having wars there as well

[BerenTebogo]

Probably, they spent about $100 billion (inflation adjusted) during the space race, and that was with the sole goal of putting a man on the moon. We only spend $18 billion a year now, and that encompasses a ton of different programs.

This is correct. Not to mention we basically threw caution to the wind in sending those astronauts up to the moon. Since the challenger incident in the 80's though a much, much larger part of the budget has been spent on making the whole process safer for the astronauts. Which, again in the words of Stan Marsh, is slowing down the process of all mankind, you douches (not you ceph)

[Kyreth]

The United States of Space.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3246/...b1c2fc00_o.jpg

Too late. The Nazis are there.

[Kryssan]

You're idiotically claiming that the advancements made 40+ years ago are unique and mutually exclusive of any independent R&D which is a blatant falsehood.

The advancements made from the apollo program IN CONTRAST to the advancements made from unmanned exploration of all forms to our way of life today and society as a whole make you look even stupider.

Manned missions to space are an EXTRAORDINARY drain on the budget, not to mention EXTREMELY dangerous at the present time. Also, you neglect to mention that while at the time those examples may have been innovative, but currently a large amount of the development and furtherance of all of those projects is in the hands of private corporations. Also that private industries are making much stronger headway in technical applications and equipment that may one day be used in space.

At present we can go to the space station or the moon. It is physically impossible any time in the near future for us, or anyone on earth, to send someone to Mars. This is hard scientific fact. The latest bit of information we've gotten from the moon was from an unmanned mission and provided more insight into the make-up of our moon than 40 years of analyzing the data from the apollo program, cool huh?

Innovation does not exist in a vacuum and more often than not technological breakthroughs are cracked by many groups within the same time period.

The possible increased budget coupled with the temporary eradication of the exploration funding will do more for our technical, theoretical, and practical advancement than you will ever be able to understand, as is evidenced by your ignorance of the importance the potential discoveries still to be made in the universe.

There are thousands of stellar black holes at the center of our own galaxy and a super-massive black hole in a state that can only be described as dormant because of our lack of understanding of it (we think that the energy expelled is so powerful that it is equaling the gravitational force that it yields) and the same is true about the center of every galaxy. But hell, who cares about that, let's get some fucking moon rocks.

The problem with your arguement here is that even if they redistribute the wealth to R&D, they're not redistributing it in the way you keep trying to use as your example. So what exactly is the point? Go to the moon, or work on climate change? Thats currently whats on the plate here. Not your black hole loving source project. Its just going to more waste spending in a different field. Whats the benefit of that?


I wasn't arguing that the government has only one use for NASA, or that we need to be going to the moon. I just disagree with the statements being thrown around that sending people into space is useless, as you can see it wasn't. What ifs aside, sending people into space has yielded great results, mainly because it opens our eyes to things we don't see on paper. NASA (and humans) keep learning those lessons the hard way, unfortunately.


I believe we need to get people, and establishments, into space. And I honestly believe that private enterprise is better for it, because the government is way too bogged down in its other messes. Since you like talking about black holes, I'll tell you I like talking about antimatter. Antimatter research for one would greatly benefit from having facilities moved to space, and by having the people up there with it (hello to you Silvertown explosion). But those things aren't going to happen while humans are still grounded, and I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly a humanitarian. Attempting to save the world really is asinine. The moon? No. But right now, we don't have anything to even keep ourselves going to the ISS without hitchhiking.

[Ferien]

Absolutely fucking furious.

[Ksandra]

It was all developed for sending people into space, and since all if it came about due to our race to go to the moon...it did not require it, but a lot of it was made FOR it.

Are you honestly thinking NASA is gonna "herpa derpa" around because their goal is no longer to go to the MOON?


You have so little faith in our scientists and their unstoppable need to create shit to brag to other nerdy scientists.

[Cadsuane]

Shit, that's bad news OP. Hey, did they ever figure out if water mining on the moon's surface would ever be viable? I'd always thought that was part of the reason we were going back there.

Oh yes. I always thought that the heralding of new scientific discoveries and accomplishments were the best sign that humanity is on the right track. You know what they say; all that is human either advances or retrogrades. And how did the original moon landings not accomplish anything? The samples brought back contributed heavily to the giant impact hypothesis and told us alot about the early conditions of the earth and how it was formed, if I remember correctly, and that's just for starters.

[Zeb]

One could argue the value of sending people to the moon as far as inspiring the next generation of scientists compared to what Obama wants NASA do to for the next 10 years.

[BerenTebogo]

The problem with your arguement here is that even if they redistribute the wealth to R&D, they're not redistributing it in the way you keep trying to use as your example. So what exactly is the point? Go to the moon, or work on climate change? Thats currently whats on the plate here. Not your black hole loving source project. Its just going to more waste spending in a different field. Whats the benefit of that?


I wasn't arguing that the government has only one use for NASA, or that we need to be going to the moon. I just disagree with the statements being thrown around that sending people into space is useless, as you can see it wasn't. What ifs aside, sending people into space has yielded great results, mainly because it opens our eyes to things we don't see on paper. NASA (and humans) keep learning those lessons the hard way, unfortunately.


I believe we need to get people, and establishments, into space. And I honestly believe that private enterprise is better for it, because the government is way too bogged down in its other messes. Since you like talking about black holes, I'll tell you I like talking about antimatter. Antimatter research for one would greatly benefit from having facilities moved to space, and by having the people up there with it (hello to you Silvertown explosion). But those things aren't going to happen while humans are still grounded, and I'm sorry, but I'm not exactly a humanitarian. Attempting to save the world really is asinine. The moon? No. But right now, we don't have anything to even keep ourselves going to the ISS without hitchhiking.

Actually, yes, they are. Which makes this a bit more comical. The research and development being done regarding probes, orbiting telescopes, and telescopes here on earth is a direct application to what I'm talking about. Are they redistributing the budget directly to that field in any way? I don't know, I didn't get that far in the article before I got annoyed at the people up in arms about this. At the very least it takes focus off an area we didn't need to be focused on.

I have the NASA news app on my Droid on my front screen and I was reading it today before one of my classes started. Apparently a star much larger than our sun was due to go supernova recently, and as best we can tell - it didn't. Now we can't say for sure whether it did or didn't because the radiation emitted from the titanium-44 isotopes that we expected to see blown across the universe can't be measured with our current telescopes, the KeV is too strong on the titanium-44, somewhere around 48KeV and we can only read up to 20KeV.

How is this relevant you ask? GUESS WHAT NASA IS DEVELOPING?! That's right folks, a telescope that can read up to ~70 KeV. Wanna play another game? Guess what form the energy a black hole emits is in? If you guessed X-ray! You're right!

Now is this going to be sped up because of the cutbacks in exploration? Again, I can't say. What I CAN say, without a doubt, is that it WILL NOT be slowed down by some asinine desire to send people into space.

As for developments in the field that can't be found on paper...um...what? Let's see here, we put people on the moon, collected data that a 2x2ft robot with a shovel and a satellite dish could've collected and planted a flag. We remotely crashed an unmanned probe into the moon and discovered water ice. Yeah, our boys from the apollo program sure didn't miss anything while they were up there.

As Ceph cited, we're increasing the funding to the research in the space station which has ACTUAL applications. The only thing we're scrapping is the billions of money wasted on trying to develop a better rocket to safely send people to the places that are beyond our ability to safely send people.

I don't care if they redistribute the money for better toilets so the researchers can be more comfortable while taking a shit. It focuses the priorities of the entire NASA program.

Whatever applications and innovations you think can still be made from sending people into space pale in comparison to the money spent to develop them. And wtf at black holes = antimatter? Wat.

[Demosthenes11]

wat


And the retard doubles down. gg

yes, you tell me how spending trillions on one thing while we have no money is different than spending trillions of dollars while we have no money.

I'm not even making a judgment on healthcare (hi i supported it), just pointing out the irony

[Rhinox]

Nigga wants to get reelected by trying to be more appealing to the Tea baggers. Problem is there is nothing short of resurrecting Jesus that Obama could do that would make him more appealing to them.

[Cadsuane]

One could argue the value of sending people to the moon as far as inspiring the next generation of scientists compared to what Obama wants NASA do to for the next 10 years.

Well then, consider that argument made.

[Cadsuane]

And wtf at black holes = antimatter? Wat.

Hawking radiation.

[Rhinox]

yes, you tell me how spending trillions on one thing while we have no money is different than spending trillions of dollars while we have no money.

I'm not even making a judgment on healthcare (hi i supported it), just pointing out the irony

I'm not gonna turn this into a healthcare debate. But to answer your question. We can not go to the moon or in space ever and still live fruitful albeit boring as shit lives.

The same can't be said about Health care 'spending.'

which btw

Spoiler: show

Isn't really spending since the CBO has stated multiple times it actually lowers the deficit.

get it?

[BerenTebogo]

One could argue the value of sending people to the moon as far as inspiring the next generation of scientists compared to what Obama wants NASA do to for the next 10 years.

I finished the article after my last post, and I want to touch on this.

The choice, if we look at the article literally (which we shouldn't) is sacrificing human exploration development for earth-climate research.

What does this mean on its face? LOLOL GLOBAL WARMING LOL. What does it really mean? It means literally, climate research. NASA is not the national weather association. You can study the climate without it being about global warming or other stupid shit associated with it.

In order to hope, in any way for the future, that we can terraform other planets or even build habitations on the moon, let alone other planets, we need to understand more about creating earth-climate where it doesn't exist. Follow some reasonable logic, we cannot create from scratch what we cannot alter, or fix. If we cannot understand, from a technological standpoint, how to impact existing climate situation within our own atmosphere then we have no hope of creating a long-lasting artificial one.

Do I think it's a good move on Obama's part to focus NASA on this stuff? Not particularly, but it's the lesser of two evils. At least an argument can be made for the earth-climate research and the possible applications it can have on the future of space exploration.

The Ares project was hugely overbudget and we have very little to show for it. Even if we did, the rocket design itself still wouldn't have changed anything about where we can go. The constellation project was to bring men BACK TO THE MOON by 2020. Seriously? It's the moon. We have more important shit to do than go back to the moon, and it can all be done remotely.

[BerenTebogo]

Hawking radiation.

I read it as him saying that black holes WERE antimatter. Which is why I went 'wat'

[Kryssan]

In the meantime, the White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible.

This is from the article Sono posted.


Not going back to the moon right now? Perfectly ok with.

Not continuing to put people into space? Not so ok with. But I'll deal with it because other people are working on it anyway so if NASA stops it doesn't matter, someone else will take care of it.

Redirecting the money from a silly project to another silly project? Totally not ok with. Which is what this is about, my former posts were directed at people who said sending people into space was worthless. No, it wasn't. It yielded data. We have other programs which have given us greater data, based in some part on what we learned from the past. Did it yield the same kind of data? No. And I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but that both have their uses. We've learned a lot about trying to put humans into space, and those lessons have given the theory guys a lot to play with for the future.



What I CAN say, is that regardless of your thoughts on sending someone into space, the asinine is far from over. I disagree with you, and with others, that sending people into space is worthless. But what I'm fighting with you here is that you're completely missing the point of the original article in the first place. Hence the Copenhagen comment. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing now.



So antimatter is a joke compared to black holes for you? Seriously, just what are you laughing at I must wonder. Hay gaiz my theoretical science stuff is cooler than yours, lol. Really? That's what we're down to?

[BerenTebogo]

I posted while you were posting and it, on first glance, looks like I touched on some of the stuff you just said. I'll edit this after I read your post, lol.

Edit: Ok, I get what you're saying, but I don't agree. The bottom line is that we DID put people into space. Was it worthless? No. Was it worth it in comparison with what we've learned since without sending people into space? Not even close. Sure we did make some advancements, I conceded that, but I also said the advancements we made were dwarfed by the advancements we've made since, independent of manned missions.

What is worthless is that knowing what we do now, still wanting to put people into space over spending the money on venues that could offer far more intellectual profit. Put aside the lolbama shit for a minute and look at it arbitrarily: send people into space, to the moon as all nasa was planning until 10 years from now, or divert all of the billions we'd spend over 10 years on that project to expanding our ability to acquire information from Earth about more than just the moon.

It's a pretty simple choice.

Is putting the nix on manned space exploration for now good? Yes. Is what lolbama is doing with the funds good? From what we know, no. Again though, in my opinion it's the lesser of two evils.

[Demosthenes11]

I'm not gonna turn this into a healthcare debate. But to answer your question. We can not go to the moon or in space ever and still live fruitful albeit boring as shit lives.

The same can't be said about Health care 'spending.'

which btw

Spoiler: show

Isn't really spending since the CBO has stated multiple times it actually lowers the deficit.

get it?

yea i wont turn this into a health debate so i wont really respond
WHITE FLAG IS URS SIR