Both the space shuttle and station a waste of money!!!

caper · Jul 5, 2006

Dont get me wrong. I think the 70's design shuttle and the space station are a waste of money. I think we should be designing new shuttles. We have 80 years of research into car design ( and what an inprovement too)and few years into spacecraft design. Why arent we also going to Mars? Why dont we tow that thing around Mars? What did they really discovered up there? Lets build a Pulse rocket and go to MArs in 28 days or less. NASA is in a VAcuum alright!!!

CalliArcale · Jul 5, 2006

All right, it's time these "shuttle is a waste of money" threads got consolidated. They're all talking about the same thing anyway. Please try to find one of the existing threads and continue discussion there. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

qso1 · Jul 5, 2006

New shuttles, NASA has tried several times to design new shuttles or reusable craft (Delta Clipper, Venture Star, Shuttle II, NASP). All met the cost barrier. NASA has proposed going to Mars several times in three decades. That met the cost barrier. What praytell is the cost barrier? The cost barrier is my definition for why humans have remained in low earth orbit since the end of Apollo. We broke the sound barrier, the man in space barrier, even the man on the moon barrier, but not the cost barrier. NASA cannot get the kind of funds it would take to actually do that which you ask. Private industry is just now getting around to proposing and in a couple of cases, developing solutions to getting humans to orbit in reusable craft but the jury is still out on whether they can do it for much less expense. Pulse rockets, well, the closest we have to that is the Orion study which depends on nuclear explosions set off at rapid sequence to move the craft. This vehicle made it to the test stage in the early 1960s before the atmospheric test ban treaty ended the project. The tests were done with conventional explosives which demonstrated the basic concept. Back to Mars. Currently NASA is working at the request of the Bush Administration on a program called Vision for Space Exploration (VSE). This program calls for phasing out the shuttle by 2010. Introducing a new space capsule called the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) which will be utilized for ISS initially, and then a return to the moon no earlier than 2018. It will also be utilized as part of a plan to send humans to Mars after 2020. But these mars plans are still rather vague at best. The lunar plans, some call them Apollo II and I call them NASAs admission that it cannot develop a robust reusable winged vehicle to get to low orbit. It all boils down to expense. NASA being a taxpayer funded agency is also one of the agencies that is seen by the majority of th <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

CalliArcale · Jul 5, 2006

*ahem* We have too many threads on this topic. This makes it difficult to follow the discussion. Please people, when you've got a new thing to say about your favorite annoyance, please don't start a new thread each time. Find one of the existing threads and use that. There is a search feature (look at the upper right-hand corner of the forum display page). Please make use of it. A couple of active threads related to this topic (there are many older ones): Is the space shuttle too risky to use? Pray for Discovery / ISS failure <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff." -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink" </div>

kdavis007 · Jul 5, 2006

Wow, the billionth post about the Shuttle and the ISS being a waste of money......

pathfinder_01 · Jul 6, 2006

“ What did they really discovered up there?” To be blunt, as much as I admire Apollo, it is best to think of Apollo as a cold war stunt. An amazing cold war stunt, but still a stunt. Apollo was built around beating the rusians to the moon. The shuttle allowed for longer and more varied missions than the Apollo craft. With a larger more roomy spacecraft like the shuttle you could do lots of studies on space sickness(What causes it? How to advoid/reduce it). You could do longer studies on how weightlessness affects the human body. You could create new materials. You could test the way that fire spreads in a zero g. (Handy thing to know in case your mars craft should have a fire). You could test assembely and repair techniques.(You know for building that humongous manned mars ship.) You could test materials (i.e. What does space do to spacecraft materials? Does it make them weaker?). The ISS allows us to test various technologies in space. The ISS has shown that a mars mission might need more spare parts then previously thought and that the crew will need to be well trained to repair the thing. When something breaks on the ISS it is a learning experience. The ISS was built with the best technology we have and had it been the 1st manned trip to mars instead of a space station orbiting earth the first crew to mars might well have been lost. Gyros that should have lasted years broke, the hard drives sent up were unreliable. The oxygen generation system has been tempermental at best. It is better to work out those sorts of bugs in earth orbit than racing to mars with no hope of resupoly. Both craft have done a lot to advance our knowledge. Also by the way it is more like 100 years of knowledge into car design. The 1st cars were created in the 19th century.

rfoshaug · Jul 6, 2006

<blockquote>In reply to:<hr />We have 80 years of research into car design ( and what an inprovement too)and few years into spacecraft design.<hr /></blockquote> What are you trying to say here? We've spent 80 (it's more like 100) years on perfecting car design, but only few years on spacecraft. And how is this a proof that spacecraft research is a waste of money? Besides, a car and a spacecraft are not comparable vehicles. It's a bit like comparing cars to computers and complaining that the speed of new cars don't double every 3 years. You say "let's build a Pulse rocket and go to Mars in 28 days or less". How do you believe such a "Pulse rocket" should be built? What fuels should it use? What forces would the spacecraft be exposed to? How would you protect the crew from G-forces, radiation or other forces that would act upon them? What would it cost? Where would the money come from? What would Congress say? What if there is no such thing as a "Pulse rocket" that can go to Mars in 28 days? These are all questions that NASA has to answer. So should they spend billions upon billions to find out that the answer to the last question above is... "No"? Or should they build vehicles they know is physically, theoretically and technically possible to build with the money they have? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> ----------------------------------My minds have many opinions </div>

mattblack · Jul 6, 2006

Why don't we go to Mars? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Otherwise, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah................. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> One Percent of Federal Funding For Space: America CAN Afford it!! LEO is a Prison -- It's time for a JAILBREAK!! </div>

mattblack · Jul 6, 2006

Also: The word solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is used for two related yet distinct concepts: An epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world — that is, the source of one's perceptions — therefore cannot be conclusively known; it may not even exist. This is also called external world skepticism. A metaphysical belief that nothing beyond oneself and one's internal experiences does in fact exist, and that all objects, people, etc, that one experiences are merely parts of one's own mind. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> One Percent of Federal Funding For Space: America CAN Afford it!! LEO is a Prison -- It's time for a JAILBREAK!! </div>

frodo1008 · Jul 6, 2006

Heck Calli, even if you start a thread on almost any other space subject the thread has a tendency to get highjacked by people with these negative viewpoints!! Personally, I think that is why this forum has lost so many experienced and intelligent posters. Like me they grew sick and tired of it! I just happen to be made of sterner stuff (and I have almost quit several times!). Would it even be possible to have moderate discussions of such subjects somewhere?

vulture2 · Jul 7, 2006

I do not feel my viewpoint is negative; I've spent most of my carreer inthe space program. But few people today understand why we went to the moon; it wasn't a stunt, but neither was it the "spirit of exploration". It was the time of the conflict of ideologies. The Soviets had just launched Sputnik; the nonaligned countries had begin to believe the Soviet system was superior. Kennedy believed we should avoid war; we had to demonstrate our superiority without bloodshed. He decided not to pursue a permanent space station or a circumlunar flight because they were not dramatic enough. The moon race was justified as a surrogate for violent conflict. Ironically the ISS was finally supported by Congress (after many rejections) when it became a catalyst for international trust and cooperation. Unfortunately the VSE has no such justification. The only other reasons for human spaceflight are research and tourism, and both would be good reasons to go if the cost were lower, but at reoughly $100,000,000 per seat just to get to LEO, neither is practical. The great tragedy of the Shuttle is that we are learning precisely the wrong lesson, that reusable spacecraft are unsafe and expensive. In reality the reason the Shuttle failed to meet its specifications for cost and safety is simply that design decisions were made when we had no actual flight experience with many of the critical systems. The technology demonstrator program could have provided that flight experience without risking lives. Unfortunately all work on reusable vehicles has been cancelled so we can return to the moon with 40-year-old technology. We are eating our seed corn to pay for what this time really is a stunt. I'd like to hear from even one person who was in the field in '69 who believes that public support for the VSE won't collapse as soon as or even before we land on the moon again.

qso1 · Jul 7, 2006

Apollo IMO was a confluence of events. True a large part of it was to beat the Soviets to the moon but flight to the moon seemed to be almost inevitable. After man made his first airplane flight in 1903, the developments came rapidly. The sound barrier broken less than 50 years after Kitty Hawk. Werhner Von Braun was already interested in going to the moon and beyond. The Russians were certainly progressing towards human spaceflight and indeed achieved many early firsts. And of course, as you pointed out, JFK and others were looking at it as a peaceful way to compete with the Soviets who also seemed driven to explore space at that time. VSE will hopefully lead to a permanent lunar base. This if it survives the incoming Presidential Administration of 2008 which may be democrats. The public always elects the opposite parties after one has been in office awhile. With growing deficits (Always handy excuses to cut NASA budgets) and war costs. VSE would make a handy target for politicians, especially those who consider GW Bush to have had a failed presidency. One can only hope private industry will finally take the lead in human spaceflight activity, at least to low earth orbit. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

frodo1008 · Jul 8, 2006

Your post does not appear to me to be negative, just totally impractical! NASA is NOT going to get enough money to design another attempt at a fully reusable winged type of vehicle it just isn't going to happen! THAT is why they are going back to capsules. To some extent I agree with your point of view entirely, but the money just isn't there! Heck, if you wanted to state that it isn't there for the current capsule type of design either, I wouldn't totally disagree with your there, unfortunately! However, making use of what we KNOW works, and then improving upon it (perhaps this time we can even stay the course). We CAN go back to the moon at a cost that congress seems to be willing to put up with. When we do go back to the moon it will be for initially longer stays and with twice as many people as we had with Apollo, for even less funding. In the face of all the inflation since the 1960's that really isn't too bad. Even the Apollo astronauts themselves felt that they had far less time to even begin to explore the areas that they landed in than they should have had! Then there is the relatively amazing possibility of water ice in the deep craters of the moons poles. More possible exploration sites? You better believe it is! Tell me, how many have visited the dark side (not actually dark, just not visible from the Earth)of the moon? Exactly none! The moon has far, far more area to it than the US! I would have to google it, but I wonder how the moon's entire surface area compares with the total land mass of the Earth, that is without the oceans. I would bet it would be at least comparable, if not even greater. If I was to tell you that we were going to land in some six places in the US, and then tell you that the most we could get away from the landing sites was less then 10 miles in a straight line, would you then conclude that we had thoroughly explored the US! If so, then I would say that all

frodo1008 · Jul 8, 2006

Your post does not appear to me to be negative, just totally impractical! NASA is NOT going to get enough money to design another attempt at a fully reusable winged type of vehicle it just isn't going to happen! THAT is why they are going back to capsules. To some extent I agree with your point of view entirely, but the money just isn't there! Heck, if you wanted to state that it isn't there for the current capsule type of design either, I wouldn't totally disagree with your there, unfortunately! However, making use of what we KNOW works, and then improving upon it (perhaps this time we can even stay the course). We CAN go back to the moon at a cost that congress seems to be willing to put up with. When we do go back to the moon it will be for initially longer stays and with twice as many people as we had with Apollo, for even less funding. In the face of all the inflation since the 1960's that really isn't too bad. Even the Apollo astronauts themselves felt that they had far less time to even begin to explore the areas that they landed in than they should have had! Then there is the relatively amazing possibility of water ice in the deep craters of the moons poles. More possible exploration sites? You better believe it is! Tell me, how many have visited the dark side (not actually dark, just not visible from the Earth)of the moon? Exactly none! The moon has far, far more area to it than the US! I would have to google it, but I wonder how the moon's entire surface area compares with the total land mass of the Earth, that is without the oceans. I would bet it would be at least comparable, if not even greater. If I was to tell you that we were going to land in some six places in the US, and then tell you that the most we could get away from the landing sites was less then 10 miles in a straight line, would you then conclude that we had thoroughly explored the US! If so, then I would say that all

frodo1008 · Jul 8, 2006

Sorry, I don't know how this became a double post! Honest I don't. Especially as this was a realtively long one even for me!

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