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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by Sending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
"Sure, it's worthwhile. Unlike the untold trillions spent in the U.S. on various forms of welfare that just results in more of them breeding, needing more welfare, which cuts into productivity and other programs. However, they should NOT have wasted $150B on the space station, it killed planetary exploration." Given the complexity and timeline of space station activities it seems really strange that even someone like me who is a fan of manned space can't name one thing that's been done there that benefitted anybody. When there's an argument about it's cost I usually post a request for one grand accomplishment - we were promised many - other than the mythical super salmonella strain that could be bred there (Is this a good idea? - read the Andromeda Strain), I get zero answers. Lots of people think we have to keep it going - What will we get back? - Again I've never heard anything except - we're now at a point when paybacks will start. Really. NASA had requests out for proposals for research on the ISS - so maybe they don't know either. I can't help but think it will never be more that a Political Science experiment gone wrong that's taken on a life if it's own. The shuttle was supposed to make access to space cheap and rapid. I have a copy of a US Senate letter that projected $10Million per launch, 2 week turnaround, 50 launches a year. OK that was 1980 dollars - but now we have 4 month plus turn around, $650 Million per launch. (Just to put reality in that increase consider a car that cost $5,000 in 1980 costing $325,000 now - it's not just inflation) The shuttle was a bad path - the technology just wasn't ready and the space station kept it alive. And is still keeping it alive. It's a shame Apollo Applications was cancelled in favor of this route. If you dig out the old plans you'll find - semi permanent lunarbases, Lunar reconnisance orbiters, manned venus flybys, deeper space missions etc. All based on the Saturn V and modified Apollo hardware like the Block 4 Command Module. (Block 2 went to the moon). |
#2
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow bySending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On Aug 6, 11:45*am, "Val Kraut" wrote:
"Sure, it's worthwhile. *Unlike the untold trillions spent in the U.S. on various forms of welfare that just results in more of them breeding, needing more welfare, which cuts into productivity and other programs. *However, they should NOT have wasted $150B on the space station, it killed planetary exploration." Given the complexity and timeline of space station activities it seems really strange that even someone like me who is a fan of manned space can't name one thing that's been done there that benefitted anybody. When there's an argument about it's cost I usually post a request for one grand accomplishment - we were promised many - other than the mythical super salmonella strain that could be bred there (Is this a good idea? - read the Andromeda Strain), I get zero answers. Lots of people think we have to keep it going - What will we get back? - Again I've never heard anything except - we're now at a point when paybacks will start. Really. NASA had requests out for proposals for research on the ISS - so maybe they don't know either. I can't help but think it will never be more that a Political Science experiment gone wrong that's taken on a life if it's own. The shuttle was supposed to make access to space cheap and rapid. I have a copy of a US Senate letter that projected $10Million per launch, 2 week turnaround, 50 launches a year. OK that was 1980 dollars - but now we have 4 month plus turn around, $650 Million per launch. (Just to put reality in that increase consider a car that cost $5,000 in 1980 costing $325,000 now - it's not just inflation) The shuttle was a bad path - the technology just wasn't ready and the space station kept it alive. And is still keeping it alive. It's a shame Apollo Applications was cancelled in favor of this route. If you dig out the old plans you'll find - semi permanent lunarbases, Lunar reconnisance orbiters, manned venus flybys, deeper space missions etc. All based on the Saturn V and modified Apollo hardware like the Block 4 Command Module. (Block 2 went to the moon). Any society has choices - go forward or stagnate and collapse. Recent US administrations have decided to stagnate and collapse. (We are collapsing now - in case you haven't noticed) Bush was just lying (as usual) when he nattered about some future (always 'future') plans to go to Mars. Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the moon)! Kennedy (the last 'good' president), sent the US to the moon 50 years ago. And the conniving, inept, little neocon puppet men who have followed him have sent you and the country to 2nd rate status. |
#3
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by Sending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
Any society has choices - go forward or stagnate and collapse. Recent US administrations have decided to stagnate and collapse. (We are collapsing now - in case you haven't noticed) This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could have had colonies in Europe. Bush was just lying (as usual) when he nattered about some future (always 'future') plans to go to Mars. I think things were a bit more complicated - at the time there was discussions of closing half the NASA centers and ending the shuttle to free up budget. Much like we closed obsolete military bases. Then when the local politicians like Pelosi screamed no, we got into the 10 healthy NASA centers mantra, with many design decisions being made by the political science folks instead of the rocket science folks. There was talk of building the Lunar Lander at the Cape because it was too large to ship. Then they build a thermal vacuum chamber near Sandusky Ohio to test the Constellation vehicles. We didn't have the money for Altair - but multiple NASA centers were already building and testing protoype surface rovers - and still are. Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the moon)! Obama as a senator introduced legislation to kill NASA and spend the money on welfare - the new Proxmire. Look at the mission he gives to the director - go make friends in the third world. Obama confirms it, then denies it, but it's being done. To go where no NASA director has ever gone before - the UAE. What else has Bolden actually done. I'd love to know the real politics behind the Augustine Report. Let's go look at a mathematical point in space - I remember being on a cruise where three old ladies ran to the window to get a glimpse of the Artic Circle. Or is it just rally around the part Lockheed already has. Kennedy (the last 'good' president), sent the US to the moon 50 years ago. And the conniving, inept, little neocon puppet men who have followed him have sent you and the country to 2nd rate status. I worked on Apollo - those were great days. Apollo had a mission, was a national effort, and we made it really happen. NASA was new Kennedy had a clearly defined goal, and you didn't have the centers fighting each other for funds. Constellation was a logical extension to Apollo - yet we had celebrites like Buzz running around saying - we already did that - and people buying it. |
#4
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by SendingNASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote:
This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could have had colonies in Europe. That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the cost of running it, it was a net money loser. Pat |
#5
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by SendingNASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On 8/7/2010 2:00 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:
That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the cost of running it, it was a net money loser. There's a whole book on that fleet BTW, called "When China Ruled The Seas" The fleet was made ready and stocked with high quality trade goods for its voyages through the Indian ocean and down the east coast of Africa. But all that would come back on it were things like raw ivory and live giraffes; and once the novelty of the giraffes wore off, it was realized that the area it was sailing to didn't have anything equal or greater in value to the trade goods. Spices from the area could be obtained by land routes or small vessels coming and going from Chinese ports. In a lot of ways, this is indeed very similar to the current manned space program - we brought some rocks back from the Moon, the novelty of them wore off, and it's going to take a lot of economic worth coming out of the ISS to ever justify the cost of building, crewing, and supplying it...and there's been no sign of that occurring yet. Pat |
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow bySending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On Aug 7, 10:38*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/7/2010 2:00 AM, Pat Flannery wrote: That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the cost of running it, it was a net money loser. There's a whole book on that fleet BTW, called "When China Ruled The Seas" The fleet was made ready and stocked with high quality trade goods for its voyages through the Indian ocean and down the east coast of Africa. But all that would come back on it were things like raw ivory and live giraffes; and once the novelty of the giraffes wore off, it was realized that the area it was sailing to didn't have anything equal or greater in value to the trade goods. Spices from the area could be obtained by land routes or small vessels coming and going from Chinese ports. In a lot of ways, this is indeed very similar to the current manned space program - we brought some rocks back from the Moon, the novelty of them wore off, and it's going to take a lot of economic worth coming out of the ISS to ever justify the cost of building, crewing, and supplying it...and there's been no sign of that occurring yet. Pat So instead ancient China turned inward, shut the doors, and stagnated for the next 800 years or so. End product was Mao sending all society into liquid cow poop rice fields to try and prevent starvation - unsuccessfully. |
#7
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow bySending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On Aug 7, 6:00*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote: This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could have had colonies in Europe. That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the cost of running it, it was a net money loser. Pat Got sources for that conclusion? I question its veracity. |
#8
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by SendingNASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On 8/7/2010 10:13 AM, lorad wrote:
On Aug 7, 6:00 am, Pat wrote: On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote: This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could have had colonies in Europe. That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the cost of running it, it was a net money loser. Pat Got sources for that conclusion? I question its veracity. Read the book "When China Ruled The Seas": http://www.amazon.com/When-China-Rul.../dp/0195112075 Which goes into detail about the whole episode; the fleet was the idea of the palace eunuch party who assumed that there were great riches out somewhere in the oceans just waiting to be found and brought back to China. So they kept sending the fleet out to find their version of El Dorado (right down to an elixir of eternal life), and the fleet kept coming back with less of worth aboard than it cost to operate and stock with trade goods. After this happened several times, the whole concept fell out of favor with the Emperor and the palace Confucian scholars, and the fleet was scraped and written off as a boondoggle. Which raises a very interesting point; the reason they couldn't find much to trade for is that they were the most culturally advanced civilization on the planet at the time, and wherever they went it was heading downhill in a cultural and artistic sense. But assume for a moment that that wasn't the case; they set out and ran into some sort of civilization more advanced than they were. Their first concern would have been that that superior civilization was going to realize that a nation that could build a fleet like that was very rich indeed, and show up on their doorstep with an army on _their_ ships to invade China. So it was a lose-lose proposition; either you find only more backward cultures that don't have much of worth to trade for, or you find something that is more advanced than you are, and have what started out as trade end up as invasion. At least in the Ming fleet's case their were actually other cultures to interact with and breathable air...which is more than one can say about anywhere else in this solar system. And unlike in Star Trek, if you run into alien races, it's very unlikely that they will be at your technological level, as even a period equivalent of a few hundred years could give them such a technological lead over you that they could squash you like a bug if they so desired. So the Enterprise fires its phasers at the hostile enemy vessel; and around a day later all the planets in the Federation have their suns go nova. Pat |
#9
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by SendingNASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote:
Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the moon)! Or maybe not: http://www.phenomenica.com/2010/08/m...reviously.html Pat |
#10
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If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow bySending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?
On Aug 7, 8:45 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote: Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the moon)! Or maybe not:http://www.phenomenica.com/2010/08/m...-as-previously.... Pat Recent data from Chandrayaan 1 and LRO seem to indicate ice sheets at least 2 meters thick: http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/20...e-of-the-moon/ http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mi..._deposits.html Some casual space buffs have conflated this with McCubbins' recent speculation that the moon may have more water in it's interior: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...dings-science/ While your phenomenica link may call McCubbin's theory into question, it does absolutely nothing to contradict the Chandrayaan-1 and LRO findings. The water in the very cold polar craters is thought to be frozen out gasses left over from cometary impacts. Not many (if any) believe the polar ice is from the moon's interior. |
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