Space Exploration

Are NASA's future missions and budget justified?

  • It's worth the time and expenditures

    Votes: 223 66.0%

  • Complete waste of money

    Votes: 41 12.1%

  • We need to explore, but not at the current cost

    Votes: 74 21.9%
  • Total voters
    338
#527
#527
LouderVol said:
he deals with loading all the equipment, so he has to know all the different sizes and weights for each piece of equipment and some power loads for some pieces as well that have to stay on. Well the government comes out with the contract and requirements then the contractor makes it and sends the specks to my uncles company. however the government redacts, changes, doesn't allow them to use a lot of the information needed. basically he doesn't know what he is getting, except that it doesn't exceed the original maximums until he gets it. makes balancing impossible. He also says the government expects them to work the same hours as the government, which really isn't conducive to business. as i have stated the various contractors can't talk to each other but have to go throw a government agency which decides what to pass on to whom, so a lot of time needed communication just doesn't happen.

he has also told stories about when there is an administration change, either President or within NASA or other various agencies, all work has to stop, including transportation of equipment, and that numerous times billion dollar tools are sitting in a semi trailer for 2 weeks on some interstate exit while the administration figure themselves out, and this causes a lot of unneeded maintenance and redone work. This includes Congress oversight changes, which he says are the worst, because when money is short they just require complete shut down and no grace period or warning before hand.
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A majority of this is based off proprietary information. Unless his company is a sub of the prime contractor, there is a lot of information they wont have other than the requirements.
 
#529
#529
alexmanu said:
How about a manned mission to Mars? That seems like a common goal that most people could get behind.
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For me it's a worthy goal as I've stated before. Some might disagree, but whether we (the US) can afford it or go at it alone is another matter entirely.

The problem comes from the changing priorities of each Presidential Administration. I kind of outlined it here:

http://www.volnation.com/forum/politics/218756-space-exploration-13.html#post10222018

As to how the program has changed under each. I'm not partisan in the matter although a lot of people are. Most Presidents since Johnson have shifted the priorities and most haven't really had a vision to move past where we are. Bush probably came the closest to defining a long term goal in recent memory when he announced plans to return to the Moon.
 
#530
#530
BearCat204 said:
If its funded by taxpayer dollars, there will always be Government oversight....yeah I laughed, and bureaucracy. I'm all for the total privatization of space exploration, but with National Security issues, I dont think it will ever happen here. JMO
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I think it's a matter of the government getting out of the way. Set a goal, run the bids, let the engineers build things, go achieve the goals.

The Apollo Program is a prime example of the government getting out of the way for the most part. Sure there was oversight, but overall, that's when engineers were running things instead of corporate bureaucrats and government employees with thousands of regulations.
 
#531
#531
BearCat204 said:
A majority of this is based off proprietary information. Unless his company is a sub of the prime contractor, there is a lot of information they wont have other than the requirements.
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he needs basic sizes and weights, shouldn't be that big of deal to get his hands on, but it is. if he is told the box is 400 cubic feet in volume and XbyXbyX and weighs 10 tons, then gets a 300 cubic foot box that is XbyYbyZ and weighs 7 tons, he has to find something to fill the void, and re balance, which slows it down which costs money. and my uncle only deals with the end processing nothing else, so plenty of other areas for government interference.
 
#537
#537
sounds about right to my ears. interesting idea of trying to 'seed' Mars. While they used that term I don't think they were implying plants, but I am. I wonder if it would be possible to launch tons of plants at mars, leave them to marinate somehow and then gradually build up at atmosphere. I don't think a new atmosphere on Mars would work, at least for long but something to think about. In my mind you send up robots to go ahead and start preparing us a place to live, then start shipping up tons of plants and have a controlled manmade atmosphere in place. I don't think a colony can start from scratch. there will have to be systems in place.
 
#538
#538
LouderVol said:
sounds about right to my ears. interesting idea of trying to 'seed' Mars. While they used that term I don't think they were implying plants, but I am. I wonder if it would be possible to launch tons of plants at mars, leave them to marinate somehow and then gradually build up at atmosphere. I don't think a new atmosphere on Mars would work, at least for long but something to think about. In my mind you send up robots to go ahead and start preparing us a place to live, then start shipping up tons of plants and have a controlled manmade atmosphere in place. I don't think a colony can start from scratch. there will have to be systems in place.
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I find the idea of terraforming fascinating, but it's all hypothetical at this point. Some of the proposed methodologies are very cool, but all of them would take significant time if even effective.

I think realistically we would be talking about underground habitat and some surface structures with artificial atmosphere. If we were to colonize the planet, however, then we could at least start the process of trying to initiate a runaway greenhouse effect.

I'm just happy someone like Musk is seriously working toward getting people there. Yes, there are enormous challenges but challenges spark innovation.
 
#539
#539
ainge10heisman said:
Looks like we are stockpiling nukes to fight off those pesky asteroids.
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Yeah. Any physics majors wanna talk to the fact that turning a big rock into a bunch of smaller rocks won't help the problem all that much?

Hint: They will all still be in the same trajectory as before...
 
#543
#543
SpaceCoastVol said:
Yeah. Any physics majors wanna talk to the fact that turning a big rock into a bunch of smaller rocks won't help the problem all that much?

Hint: They will all still be in the same trajectory as before...
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I don't see how they could be on the same trajectory afterwards. Isn't the whole point of bombing them to knock them off their trajectory?
 
#544
#544
ainge10heisman said:
I don't see how they could be on the same trajectory afterwards. Isn't the whole point of bombing them to knock them off their trajectory?
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You blow up a big rock with a nuke, and it all ain't gonna be knocked off it's trajectory. There will still be a bunch of pretty good sized ones still headed our way. Maybe a bunch of smaller ones would be better, and maybe not, but blowing it up ain't a panacea. At least that's one of the theories about this I've read.
 
#545
#545
Space Exploration is a must. We should be farming places like the moon Titan for its combustion creating natural resources.
 
#546
#546
SpaceCoastVol said:
You blow up a big rock with a nuke, and it all ain't gonna be knocked off it's trajectory. There will still be a bunch of pretty good sized ones still headed our way. Maybe a bunch of smaller ones would be better, and maybe not, but blowing it up ain't a panacea. At least that's one of the theories about this I've read.
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The point isn't to blow it up, but to change the course. Even a percentile of a degree, cosmically speaking, means thousands if not tens of thousands of miles difference when it reaches Earth.

Blowing it up is Hollywood movie stuff.
 
#547
#547
SpaceCoastVol said:
You blow up a big rock with a nuke, and it all ain't gonna be knocked off it's trajectory. There will still be a bunch of pretty good sized ones still headed our way. Maybe a bunch of smaller ones would be better, and maybe not, but blowing it up ain't a panacea. At least that's one of the theories about this I've read.
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Good effing grief.

Seriously. Just think about that for a minute.
 
#548
#548
Grand Vol said:
The point isn't to blow it up, but to change the course. Even a percentile of a degree, cosmically speaking, means thousands if not tens of thousands of miles difference when it reaches Earth.

Blowing it up is Hollywood movie stuff.
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Of course... so why would you use a nuclear warhead? Maybe a shockwave from a detonation a few hundred Kms away would move it enough> I dunno... But I agree that blowing it up is not necessarily a viable solution
 
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#550
#550
SpaceCoastVol said:
You blow up a big rock with a nuke, and it all ain't gonna be knocked off it's trajectory. There will still be a bunch of pretty good sized ones still headed our way. Maybe a bunch of smaller ones would be better, and maybe not, but blowing it up ain't a panacea. At least that's one of the theories about this I've read.
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That's what I was getting at. The articles I've read on the subject suggest by nuking a large one, it would in fact break it up into smaller ones, with some still heading our way. The point was, those smaller ones wouldn't be life ending for everything on earth like the large one.
 
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