The New NASA Mission Has Been Grossly Mischaracterized.

In article 4llQb.60160$XD5.41416@fed1read06, "Chosp"
wrote:

"Joe Strout" wrote in message
...

I don't care about "real science."

A pity, really.

And an exaggeration. I do read _Science_ each week, and I have a M.S.
in Neuroscience, so clearly I do care about some real science. I just
don't think that it is the proper justification for activities in space,
and moreover, that this myth that space is about science has been
holding back space development for decades.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:38:29 -0700, quibbler
wrote:

In article 0Y1Qb.235603$ts4.56758@pd7tw3no, says...
The media and this group should stop calling the new NASA directive a 'moon
plan'. It seems that the belief is that Bush is cancelling everything NASA
does and moving all the money into a manned moon base. This isn't the case
at all.

No, that is quite the case. You're just in the early stages of denial
and haven't faced budget realities. The fact is that Bush has demanded a
wasteful realignment of NASA resources toward a manned mission which will
be ruinously expensive. The fact is that real science is far to
expensive with a manned program. Robots must lead the way.

Yet Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did more science on the moon in
thier few hours on the surface than all previous unmanned missions put
together. Yes manned programs are more expensive, but when conducted
properly they can return vast quanities of Science. Apollo and Skylab
were very effective, Shuttle and ISS are a waste.



It would be more accurate to call this an 'exploration plan'.

No it wouldn't you republican shill. We can explore without manned
missions or a permanent moon base. Bush is destroying the real science
programs because he just doesn't get it.

What "real" science programs has Bush proposal destroyed?

"Exploration" is just a
bull**** buzzword. You apparently weren't smart enough to figure that
out, so I'm afraid I've got to break it to you bluntly. The Bush
administration only wants diversionary stunts. They don't give a rat's
ass about science. They are theocratic cretins who know that if we do
eventually find evidence of past life on mars that it will be devatating
to their religious world view.


What's really
happening is that NASA's focus is changing from LEO cargo flights and ISS

That focus was instituted under the moronic Reagan adminstration. They
demanded "space station freedom" to keep up with the Ruskies. Bush
happily continued that program and even vowed to keep flying the shuttles
in the aftermath of columbia.

I seem to recall 8 years of another President who didn't do much to
change the status quo.


maintenance, and towards more exploration and science.

Bull****. We do science and exploration with unmanned probes. Period.
It would be inordinately dangerous with present technology to do any kind
of detailed science with manned missions. Instead of a robot like spirit
failing, our whole crew would die.

It worked on the Moon between 1969-1972, detailed science was done
with manned missions and no one died there.

There are whole classes of failures that kill robot missions dead
which would take a manned crew 30 seconds to resolve and move on.
Galileo's whole high-gain antennee problem could have been solved with
one swift kick. Mars Climate Orbiter would have survived if someone
had been looking out the window saying "thats not right".


People are too fragile to explore
most places. Even if we sent men to mars we would probably use them to
drive robots around remotely in real time. What we need to do is invest
in research and develop our technology. It's obvious that our present
technology is not quite up to the task of serious "exploration" as it is.
Relying upon it for a manned program is crazy.

All the technology was in place for a long term science and
exploration program on the moon in 1972, we let the capability drift
away, but the technology and much much more is available

It's not even clear
at this point that the main focus will be a moon base - that was just the
hook for the public.

What a ridiculous excuse. A politician directly states something as
policy and you're so in thrall to your right wing ideology that you now
say, "That's not what he really meant. That's just what he was telling
the plebes". If that was his idea of PR then it backfired bigtime. Most
people thought that a manned return to the moon would be a hugely
wasteful stunt. Now the Bushies are spinning like mad trying to back
pedal and soft pedal and do damage control.


Why is going to the moon inherently a "wasteful stunt", can't "real"
science be done on the moon?

NASA has distributed its Vision under the new initiative to its employees.
Here's what it says:

That's nice. But the idiot emperor Bush has demonstrated that he's gonna
micromanage and control the program for his own political ends. These
"vision" statements are never worth the paper they are printed on,
especially when coming at the behest of the bush administration.

Why to I get the feeling that had Al Gore uttered the exact same
proposal you would be all for it.

snip
Kelly McDonald

In article ,
says...
In article ,
quibbler wrote:

No, that is quite the case. You're just in the early stages of denial
and haven't faced budget realities. The fact is that Bush has demanded a
wasteful realignment of NASA resources toward a manned mission which will
be ruinously expensive.

The realignment of NASA resources is the best thing to happen to NASA in
30 years.



The realignment is a desperate attempt to fix the idiotic reagan
administration priorities of things like a space station and shuttle
misssion. However, manned exploration is not the way to do it and manned
exploration will eat the lion's share of this budget.


Not wasteful, but highly useful.

You are uninformed. Manned exploration is ruinously expensive. We have
known since the inception of the space program that robotic missions
would be the most cost effective ways to produce scientific data and
that's still true today almost universally.

Allowing NASA to drift
about with the lack of focus it's had for the last few decades, now THAT
would be wasteful.

NASA doesn't need a moron like Bush to pretend that he is now an expert
on space, when he's not an expert on anything except maybe smoking crack
or dodging service in vietnam. Bush is not qualified to micromanage NASA
and unfocused hodge podge of manned space stunts will only drop to zero
the amount of real science that NASA will be able to do. Yeah, we needed
to get rid of the shuttle, but Bush is the guy who vowed to keep it
flying after Columbia. Bush is all talk and no action. His proposals
give no serious amount of money to NASA to accomplish the grandiose
flagpole sitting Bush wants them to do. Rather, he is forcing them to
cancel real science in order to engage in an idiotic, completely
unnecessary moonbase boondoggle.


The fact is that real science is far too
expensive with a manned program.

I agree.

Good.

So let's not attempt to do real science.

LOL. You obviously don't understand that it is is the science that
underpins this whole program. We can't just jump in a rocket and go to
mars. We have to understand the science of how to provide life support,
shield from exotic radiations, etc. We won't know where we need to go
on mars or elsewhere without good science leading the way. Mars is a big
place. We can't just lope around it with our thumbs up our asses
pretending that we are Vasco de Gama or Christopher Columbus.



Let's work on
opening the frontier for human habitation instead.


That takes science and real intelligent planning, neither of which Bush's
plan supports. The moon would be a less hospitable place, for example,
than mars or perhaps some asteroids. We can't have a scientific
illiterate like Bush ramming his own ill-conceived politial nonsense,
like a moonbase through NASA. Reagan already ****ed NASA up thoroughly
by commiting their resources to albatrosses like ISS. We don't need Bush
doing that in spades with a moonbase which would have no source of food,
water or essential support. We don't need men on the moon right now. We
need robots to lead the way for another decade or two until we know
enough about the moon to intelligently plan our options. We also need to
spend far more on research and less on putting rocket on a lunar resort.





Robots must lead the way.

Robots have their place, but to get people living in space we really
need to have people living in space.

We've had them in space stations. There are serious health risks at
present. Similar health risks would apply on the moon. More
importantly, it would be far more expensive and difficult to constantly
send servicing and support to a moonbase as opposed to a space station.
The space station was an unnecessary piece of junk. But even sticking
with it would be better than Bush's alternative.



It would be more accurate to call this an 'exploration plan'.

No it wouldn't you republican shill. We can explore without manned
missions or a permanent moon base.

Not if by "exploration" you mean "expanding the range of places people
have visited and experienced firsthand,

That's flagpole sitting. We need to expand the range of places that our
robotic sensors have visited. We need more probes to pretty much every
planet. If Bush wants to do something for the space program then revive
the pluto-kuiper missions. Send more science packages to the outer
planets. Land robots on the moons of mars, rather than rushing to get
humans there. The experience will eventually make it much safer and
easier for humans to go there.


" which is certainly what *I*
mean by it.

Bush is destroying the real science programs because he just doesn't get it.

Or maybe you're clinging to them because YOU don't get it.

No, I get it. Science is the only thing that separates us from the lower
primates. It is more and more critical that we expand our scientific
capabilities. Bush's undermining of space science is reckless and will
only hold us back. We went to the moon and then, when we had our little
adventure fix we sat around for another 35 years doing relatively little.
The same may happen if we make one trip to mars. We'll shoot our wad and
that will be it for mars exploration for another few decades. Bush's
childish ego gratification scheme will make going back to mars the next
time that much harder.

I don't care
about "real science."

I know that because you fail to grasp that we live in a highly technical
world where we are utterly dependent on science. You also fail to grasp
the intense promise and power of science which could answer questions
about issues like whether life existed on Mars.


Real science isn't putting people on the Moon.
And I want people on the Moon. When the next killer asteroid comes our
way

We could do just as well with a space station, or bomb shelters/bunkers.
I bet the saddamesque bunker under Cheney's house would survive .


(or substitute your favorite global catastrophe), having pretty
pictures of distant galaxies and a deep understanding of the cosmos
isn't going to save humanity.

"Exploration" is just a bull**** buzzword. You apparently weren't smart
enough to figure that out, so I'm afraid I've got to break it to you bluntly.

Heh. More like, you haven't got a leg to stand on,

LOL. No, I have the legs of science, which you have decided to repudiate
in order to desperately support any crazy scheme Bush cooks up. Bush
never said he wanted his looney colony as a way to defend us from a
killer asteroid (or maybe some evil al quaeda bioweapon). Bush is just a
jackass trying to **** with the Chinese when we could be cooperating with
them. Bush doesn't give a damn about the moon or a space program. If he
had then we might have spend $200 billion on it instead of on his lies
about WMDs.


so you're reduced to
swearing and other insults. More pity to you.

Nope. However, in this case those parties deserved insults and they got
it.

rest of your repetitive junk snipped

--
__________________________________________________ ___
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

Kelly McDonald wrote:

Yet Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did more science on the moon in
thier few hours on the surface than all previous unmanned missions put
together.

Of course, there were no unmanned missions that had tried to do what
they did. (Sample gathering, high res photography in particular.) In
fact, serious surface science was *deferred* until Apollo and not even
attempted on Surveyor.

Or to put it simply; there is not a significant database of unmanned
lunar science to compare to the manned effort. Any claim like the one
quoted above is nothing but a strawman.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

Kelly McDonald wrote:

Yes manned programs are more expensive, but when conducted
properly they can return vast quanities of Science. Apollo and Skylab
were very effective, Shuttle and ISS are a waste.

I wonder if you'd say the same if Skylab had to carry the full
development cost of the Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft rather than
being a tag-along.

It worked on the Moon between 1969-1972, detailed science was done
with manned missions and no one died there.

This was as much a matter of luck as design. History shows that
nearly every single Apollo lunar mission had at least one, if not
more, significant problems that could have lead to loss of mission if
not loss of crew.

There are whole classes of failures that kill robot missions dead
which would take a manned crew 30 seconds to resolve and move on.

Yet, putting a crew onboard introduces orders of magnitude *more*
classes of failures, and not all resolvable in 30 seconds, if at all.

All the technology was in place for a long term science and
exploration program on the moon in 1972, we let the capability drift
away, but the technology and much much more is available

Sorry, the capability we had in 1972 was vastly *unsuitable* for a
long term program of that sort. Maybe after another 20 flights and
some serious debugging of the hardware. Maybe.

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
at the following URLs:

Text-Only Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq.html

Enhanced HTML Version:
http://www.io.com/~o_m/columbia_loss_faq_x.html

Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

The only thing Bush added that NASA hasn't had goals for all along was the
retiring of the Space Shuttle. Big heads at NASA talked of retiring the
shuttle but that can't really be done until someone higher up gives the go
ahead. All the other stuff was already NASA's goals.


"quibbler" wrote in message
...
In article 0Y1Qb.235603$ts4.56758@pd7tw3no, says...
The media and this group should stop calling the new NASA directive a
'moon
plan'. It seems that the belief is that Bush is cancelling everything
NASA
does and moving all the money into a manned moon base. This isn't the
case
at all.

No, that is quite the case. You're just in the early stages of denial
and haven't faced budget realities. The fact is that Bush has demanded a
wasteful realignment of NASA resources toward a manned mission which will
be ruinously expensive. The fact is that real science is far to
expensive with a manned program. Robots must lead the way.




It would be more accurate to call this an 'exploration plan'.

No it wouldn't you republican shill. We can explore without manned
missions or a permanent moon base. Bush is destroying the real science
programs because he just doesn't get it. "Exploration" is just a
bull**** buzzword. You apparently weren't smart enough to figure that
out, so I'm afraid I've got to break it to you bluntly. The Bush
administration only wants diversionary stunts. They don't give a rat's
ass about science. They are theocratic cretins who know that if we do
eventually find evidence of past life on mars that it will be devatating
to their religious world view.


What's really
happening is that NASA's focus is changing from LEO cargo flights and
ISS

That focus was instituted under the moronic Reagan adminstration. They
demanded "space station freedom" to keep up with the Ruskies. Bush
happily continued that program and even vowed to keep flying the shuttles
in the aftermath of columbia.


maintenance, and towards more exploration and science.

Bull****. We do science and exploration with unmanned probes. Period.
It would be inordinately dangerous with present technology to do any kind
of detailed science with manned missions. Instead of a robot like spirit
failing, our whole crew would die. People are too fragile to explore
most places. Even if we sent men to mars we would probably use them to
drive robots around remotely in real time. What we need to do is invest
in research and develop our technology. It's obvious that our present
technology is not quite up to the task of serious "exploration" as it is.
Relying upon it for a manned program is crazy.

It's not even clear
at this point that the main focus will be a moon base - that was just
the
hook for the public.

What a ridiculous excuse. A politician directly states something as
policy and you're so in thrall to your right wing ideology that you now
say, "That's not what he really meant. That's just what he was telling
the plebes". If that was his idea of PR then it backfired bigtime. Most
people thought that a manned return to the moon would be a hugely
wasteful stunt. Now the Bushies are spinning like mad trying to back
pedal and soft pedal and do damage control.


NASA has distributed its Vision under the new initiative to its
employees.
Here's what it says:

That's nice. But the idiot emperor Bush has demonstrated that he's gonna
micromanage and control the program for his own political ends. These
"vision" statements are never worth the paper they are printed on,
especially when coming at the behest of the bush administration.


(courtesy http://www.astrobiology.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=11605)

Guiding Principles for Exploration


a.. Pursue Compelling Questions


Only that has nothing to do with manned exploration.



a.. Exploration of the solar system will be guided by compelling
questions
of scientific and societal importance.

The only compelling question the Bush admin wants answered is "Can we
beat the chinese back to the moon and waste hundreds of billion in the
process?"


b.. Consistent with the NASA Vision and Mission, NASA exploration
programs
will seek profound answers

LOL. Yeah, profound answers to how many astronauts we can sardine into a
mars capsule and get killed in a futile bid to get them to Mars -- so
they can sit around and do nothing. This so-called vision statement
contains all the usual moronic drivel, just as I predicted.


to questions of our origins,

This from a president who claims a literal belief in the bible and the
genesis account. Not likely.


whether life exists
beyond Earth, and how we could live on other worlds.

We know what it takes to life on other worlds. We need to spend the
money developing the survival technology, rather than wasting 1.5
trillion on manned stunts.




a.. Across Multiple Worlds


a.. NASA will make progress across a broad front of destinations.
b.. Consistent with recent discoveries, NASA will focus on likely
habitable environments at the planet Mars, the moons of Jupiter, and in
other solar systems.


Yep, whatever you say.


c.. Where advantageous, NASA will also make use of destinations
likethe
Moon and near-Earth asteroids to test and demonstrate new exploration
capabilities.


a.. Employ Human and Robotic Capabilities


a.. NASA will send human and robotic explorers as partners, leveraging
the
capabilities of each where most useful.

Only they know without question that the robotic missions are superior in
just about every respect. Perhaps in 1969 we didn't have the robotic
technology to land on the moon, grab some rocks and return. However, we
certainly have that technology today. The best role for humans is as
mission controllers back on earth. Perhaps if we developed a better,
more reliable, deep space communication infrastructure then we'd actually
be making a prudent investment that would pay dividends on future
exploratory missions.


b.. Robotic explorers will visit new worlds first, to obtain
scientific
data, demonstrate breakthrough technologies, identify space resources,
and
send tantalizing imagery back to Earth.
c.. Human explorers will follow to conduct in-depth research,

Sorry, but any research that a human could do, "in-depth" could be done
by a robot as well or better, especially if there is a human controlling
it. At worst, the robot will be a litle slower and I know our
hyperactive president can't stand that. Fortunately, it looks like he
will be kicked out on his ass by next year and then he can do whatever
hyperactive nonsense he wants.
Getting back to the whole robot and human thing, we can't expect to just
send one or two probes and then humans. We need to send probe after
probe to look at things in depth. The money that we spend on the robotics
program will have important spin offs here on earth. Not so with a great
deal of manned space technology, which would primarily be useful only
off-world.



rest snipped
--
__________________________________________________ ___
Quibbler (quibbler247atyahoo.com)
"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the
threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow'
disease, and many others, but I think a case can be
made that faith is one of the world's great evils,
comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to
eradicate." -- Richard Dawkins

Derek Lyons wrote:

Of course, there were no unmanned missions that had tried to do what
they did. (Sample gathering, high res photography in particular.) In
fact, serious surface science was *deferred* until Apollo and not even
attempted on Surveyor.

Or to put it simply; there is not a significant database of unmanned
lunar science to compare to the manned effort. Any claim like the one
quoted above is nothing but a strawman.

Even so, unmanned missions either found or could have found most
of the 'big' scientific results of Apollo. Surveyor determined that
the moon was differentiated, not primitive; orbital photography got
much of the stratigraphy down; unmanned sample return (like that Soviet
lander) would have gotten the oxygen isotope, volatile depletion,
and europium anomaly results.

Paul

In article , "ahh"
wrote:

The only thing Bush added that NASA hasn't had goals for all along was the
retiring of the Space Shuttle. Big heads at NASA talked of retiring the
shuttle but that can't really be done until someone higher up gives the go
ahead. All the other stuff was already NASA's goals.

Nonsense. The Moon has been taboo at NASA for 30 years. Bush (and
O'Keefe) lifted that taboo; in fact it has been completely reversed.
Much as I hate Bush as a president, this is undeniably the best thing to
happen to NASA in decades.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:38:29 -0700, quibbler
wrote:

...... Robots must lead the way.


President Bush agrees. From
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0040114-3.html :

".... Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers -- the advanced
guard to the unknown. Probes, landers and other vehicles of this kind
continue to prove their worth, sending spectacular images and vast
amounts of data back to Earth. Yet the human thirst for knowledge
ultimately cannot be satisfied by even the most vivid pictures, or the
most detailed measurements. We need to see and examine and touch for
ourselves. And only human beings are capable of adapting to the
inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel .... "


.... We do science and exploration with unmanned probes ....

President Bush seems to be calling for both.


..... It would be inordinately dangerous with present technology to do any kind
of detailed science with manned missions ....

The reward is that scientists could be on site, doing the research
themselves. They'd have plenty of time given that depending on the
chosen orbit for their vehicle, a Mars mission has to stay either
~30-100 days or ~500 days.


.... People are too fragile to explore
most places ....

You want to be the one to tell the guys at McMurdo Station that
they'll be replaced by robots? After all, it's cold down there!
Better to put robots down there and the scientists can stay at home
where it's safe. Thing that would work? Want to tell archaeologists,
geologists, and researchers in other fields who traditionally do field
research that they should stay home and send robots? Oh, wouldn't
they love to hear that.

.... Even if we sent men to mars we would probably use them to
drive robots around remotely in real time ....

They can do that.

Then can also suit up, get out, and explore on their own.

.... What we need to do is invest
in research and develop our technology. It's obvious that our present
technology is not quite up to the task of serious "exploration" as it is.
Relying upon it for a manned program is crazy.


That's like saying Columbus shouldn't have sailed until jet aircraft
were available, or Lewis and Clark shouldn't have gone on their
expidition until the Ineterstates had been built and off-road vehicles
could be used.

Our technology is more than adequate. The main unknowns are with
regard to living in reduced gravity for a prolonged period and
radiation protection from solar flares.


.... Fortunately, it looks like he [Bush]
will be kicked out on his ass by next year and then he can do whatever
hyperactive nonsense he wants.

Maybe he will; maybe he won't. One week ago, Dr. Dean was the front
runner. I wouldn't call him that now, especially with Walter Mondale
endorsing John Kerry.


Getting back to the whole robot and human thing, we can't expect to just
send one or two probes and then humans. We need to send probe after
probe to look at things in dept .....

Better -- we can send probe after rpobe. Then we can send human
mission after human mission.

..... The money that we spend on the robotics
program will have important spin offs here on earth. Not so with a great
deal of manned space technology, which would primarily be useful only
off-world.


[sarcasm] Yeah, that home RTG I bought at at K-Mart will really help
with my energy bills. Now if only those anti-nuke granolas would get
off my freakin' lawn. [/sarcasm]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 05:05:00 GMT, "Dan Hanson"
wrote:

The media and this group should stop calling the new NASA directive a 'moon
plan' ..... It would be more accurate to call this an 'exploration plan' .....
It's a forward looking, long range plan to get NASA out of its rut .....

Interesting.

Thanks for posting.