Problem with NASA

[nec208]

Problem with NASA.<br /><br />http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1651390,00.html<br /><br />Think Americans stuck in airports have to wait a long time for a flight? Try 22 years. That's how long astronaut Barbara Morgan, 55 — who blasted off Wednesday aboard the shuttle Endeavour for a planned 11-day mission — had to cool her heels before she got her first chance to fly.<br />Chosen as the back-up to the original teacher-in-space Christa McAuliffe in 1985, Morgan was on site at Cape Canaveral the following year when McAuliffe and her six crewmates perished in the explosion of the shuttle Challenger. The fact that she's now in space is a tribute to her tenacity — to say nothing of her courage — as well as to NASA's often artful ability to include a compelling storyline in what would otherwise be a routine space flight. What it says less about — as is so often the case with the NASA of the last generation — is the value of the shuttles themselves and the current state of the manned space program.<br /><br />The Teacher in Space program was a creature of NASA's arguably naive, 1980s belief that, with a fleet of sturdy shuttles, space flight could become a wonderfully routine thing. Former Utah Senator Jake Garn snagged himself a seat on one flight — never mind that he spent much of the mission so violently space sick that NASA wags informally added a whole new category, labeled "Garn," to the sliding scale used for diagnosing nausea in orbit. Then Congressman (now Senator) Bill Nelson of Florida spent six days in space aboard the shuttle Columbia in January of 1986, the same month Challenger blew up, causing NASA to decide that maybe space flight was a risky enough job that it indeed ought best be left to the professionals. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[nec208]

Morgan nonetheless stayed with the agency, serving as a roving ambassador for space flight and remaining, in name at least, a Teacher in Space designee. Under NASA's newer, stricter flight eligibility rules, however, the only way she could ever get her chance to fly would be to quit the teaching profession and become a professional astronaut, relegating kids' education from space to a much more incidental part of her responsibilities. She applied for a slot and in 1998 was selected; she is now flying as a mission specialist, responsible for operating the robotic arm of both the shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS), with which the crew will be docking.<br /><br />Sounds like a success story, and in some ways it is. But in the service of what? This is the 119th flight of a space shuttle, the 20th for Endeavour and the 22nd overall to the ISS, a still-growing orbiting outpost that is more or less the only reason any of the shuttles fly anymore. The Endeavour crew will be delivering a two-ton truss segment that will help hold solar arrays and will require three risky spacewalks to install. If the ISS were doing good science at an arguably reasonable price, those risks would be worth taking. But it's doing almost no science at all at an exorbitant price — an estimated $100 billion a year — and will have no shuttles left to service it in 2010 when the shuttle fleet is scheduled to retire. NASA has been promising big payoffs from the ISS — advances in biomedical research, for example, and in materials manufacturing — since President Ronald Reagan first proposed it in 1984, and has never been able to deliver. Meanwhile, the shuttle Columbia claimed the lives of another seven astronauts in 2003, a disaster Morgan was once again on hand to witness, this time as capsule communicator, in Mission Control.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[qso1]

I won't bother with the ISS/NASA standard defense argument other than to say this:<br /><br />I'd rather spend $100B dollars on ISS over its lifetime than $100B dollars on Iraq. At least with ISS, we might accidently discover something before its operational life is through. With Iraq, well...I think we all know the eventual outcome of that mess.<br /><br />Barbara Morgan apparently sees some value in space exploration, having been on hand to witness two shuttle disasters and still become an astronaut and wait 22 years to actually fly. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>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.</em></p> </div>

 

[3488]

My thoughts exactly qso1.<br /><br />Andrew Brown. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><font color="#000080">"I suddenly noticed an anomaly to the left of Io, just off the rim of that world. It was extremely large with respect to the overall size of Io and crescent shaped. It seemed unbelievable that something that big had not been visible before".</font> <em><strong><font color="#000000">Linda Morabito </font></strong><font color="#800000">on discovering that the Jupiter moon Io was volcanically active. Friday 9th March 1979.</font></em></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://www.launchphotography.com/</font><br /><br /><font size="1" color="#000080">http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth</font></p><p><font size="1" color="#000080">http://web.me.com/meridianijournal</font></p> </div>

 

[vandivx]

I think it is always false to think that if some money weren't spent on such and such they would be plowed into one's particular pet project, it doesn't happen that way as a rule<br /><br />besides putting those money into this program would mean them being thrown away almost as surely as when spent on Irak, ISS & shuttle program should get plug pulled on immediately no matter the immediate loss, throwing good money after badly investment never proved good policy in whatever field<br /><br />I am watching these days a series on TV about the history of space program (starting with the end of second WW and with V2 development ending with its constructor emigrating to US and benighted Americans wasting his talents while Koroljov in Russia put Sputnik into orbit... and one feels while watching this series sort of contempt for Americans who do something only as a one upmanship, they really don't give a hoot about science up where things are decided, they just want to show them<br /><br />not that Russians had some much better motives but they proved time and time again more brave and pioneering, I mean even the renewed Moon ventures was sparked by them, now they dived on North Pole to 4K depth... I expect Americans will now wake up and maybe do something like that too<br /><br />in light of this series the space shuttle and ISS are just the kind of bungling Americans would do on which they waste tons of money instead of putting it all into unmanned probes of which we could have by now multitudes more around every planet today if it weren't for shuttle and ISS, of course what I said above is true here too, likely those money would have gone into some social black hole anyway or some war in third world<br /><br />that woman astronaut sticking to it may be admirable but then again it may not be particularly so, I'd say it depends on many things and details of which we don't know much if anything, also don't think those astronauts should be overly proud that they are spearheading <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>