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
#726
#726
its old news now, but we got hit by a couple solar storms this last week or so. Its really cool if you describe it this way. The sun shot at us with a couple gigantic radiated balls of plasma capable of ending life as we know it on the earth, thankfully our magnetic shield absorbed and deflected the blows. giving states like Indiana and New York a chance to see the "northern lights" a lot further south.

yay space.
 
#727
#727
BearCat204 said:
You say this as this will change the direction of Musk's vneture. They still have a scheduled flight in September, which has not and probably wont change. "Wortheless" is a hilarious term to give space exploration, especially seeing as you are this scientist and all.
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You should change your name to the condescension fairy. there are MUCH better things to spend money on than trying to get to Mars. But I am sure you will come up with some sort of egotistical, idiotic diatribe like you usually do. I just cannot wait :)
 
#728
#728
Interesting article as I didn't want to start a new thread.

Former NASA official: NASA must shed ?socialist? approach to space exploration | Ars Technica

In recent years, SpaceX has upended the rocket industry. Whereas established rocket companies like United Launch Alliance and Arianespace once scoffed at the California upstart, the success of SpaceX has them rapidly scrambling to cut their own launch costs and pursue reusable rockets.

SpaceX has also had an uneasy relationship with NASA. One one hand, the company’s founder, Elon Musk, broke down in tears in late 2008 when a $1.6 billion contract from NASA to supply the International Space Station saved his company. At the same time, Musk has said repeatedly that his ultimate aim with SpaceX is to land humans—perhaps even himself—on Mars. NASA also has a program to land humans on Mars. And just as NASA is building a heavy lift rocket to begin to accomplish this, so is SpaceX. Only its Falcon Heavy rocket will likely cost about one-tenth as much to launch as NASA’s Space Launch System; it will begin flying two years sooner as well.
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And while controversial, she is saying exactly what needs to be said about the bloated bureaucracy at NASA.

“The NASA people would say, ‘Come on Lori, you’ve got to talk to Elon because we got out of low-Earth orbit. We’re giving him that, but you’ve got to get him out of long-term, deep space, because that’s ours,’” Garver recalled. “I thought, fundamentally, you just don’t understand. We’re not in a race in a swimming pool where everyone is racing against one another. We’re in a cycling race where the government is riding point and the others are drafting behind us, and if someone comes alongside us and can pass us because they’ve found a better way, we don’t get out our tire pump and stick it between their spokes.”

During her tenure as NASA’s deputy administrator, Garver made more than a few enemies in Congress and at NASA. She stepped on the toes of center directors. She got crosswise with the astronaut corps. And she didn’t always play nice with NASA’s traditional aerospace partners, who expected fat contracts from the space agency but also flexible deadlines.
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#730
#730
LouderVol said:
thanks for bumping the thread. Musk is about the one guy out there doing it right.
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There are several doing it right at the moment so to speak. Virgin, Blue Origin, Bigelow, SpaceX and XCOR are all taking the lead in getting "up there" with cutting costs or taking the financial risks themselves. Provided Bigelow and SpaceX have NASA contracts, they companies themselves have put a lot of their own money into development.
 
#734
#734
Interesting how the article cuts off and doesn't tell you how far these planets are away from the earth. But remember, a light year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles. Let's say one of these planets is only 8 light years away from earth that would be speeding in space for 48 trillion miles to arrive at one planet. Do we not age while we are in space travel?
 
#735
#735
W.TN.Orange Blood said:
Interesting how the article seems to cut off and not tell you how far these planets are away from earth. But remember, a light year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles. Let's say one of these planets is only 8 light years away from earth that would be speeding in space for 48 trillion miles to arrive at one planet. Do we not age while we are in space travel?
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40 light years I believe. My alert on phone said that anyway.
 
#739
#739
tumscalcium said:
40 light years I believe. My alert on phone said that anyway.
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Crunching these numbers is fun. So, if humans could travel at the speed of our faster unmanned spacecraft (c. 38,000 mph), we could arrive to explore those new planets in around 170,000 years! Better pack some snacks...
 
#741
#741
Even travel to the nearest "Earth-like" planet would take about 4 times longer than the entire recorded human history.
 
#742
#742
kiddiedoc said:
Crunching these numbers is fun. So, if humans could travel at the speed of our faster unmanned spacecraft (c. 38,000 mph), we could arrive to explore those new planets in around 170,000 years! Better pack some snacks...
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Like I said in another post above.....do we not age while traveling in space? Is that something Einstein came up with?
 
#743
#743
kiddiedoc said:
Crunching these numbers is fun. So, if humans could travel at the speed of our faster unmanned spacecraft (c. 38,000 mph), we could arrive to explore those new planets in around 170,000 years! Better pack some snacks...
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It'll happen someday, but not within hundreds of years.
 
#746
#746
W.TN.Orange Blood said:
Like I said in another post above.....do we not age while traveling in space? Is that something Einstein came up with?
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Depends on which "frame of reference" you are using.

The space traveler sees himself aging normally, while he sees the earthbound observer aging rapidly.

The earthbound observer sees themselves aging normally as the space the space traveler has found the fountain of youth.

Special Theory of Relativity - Special and General Relativity - The Physics of the Universe
 
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#747
#747
golfballs said:
40 light years. With current space-travel technology it would take 44 million years to get there.
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Read something a while back about ionic propulsion engines that would allow for near light speed travel. It was theoretical but still amazing.
 
#748
#748
If you were driving at the speed of light and turned on your headlights, would they do anything?

-- Steven Wright
 
#750
#750
W.TN.Orange Blood said:
Interesting how the article cuts off and doesn't tell you how far these planets are away from the earth. But remember, a light year, which measures distance in space, equals 6 trillion miles. Let's say one of these planets is only 8 light years away from earth that would be speeding in space for 48 trillion miles to arrive at one planet. Do we not age while we are in space travel?
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Well, we would experience time differently the closer we were to traveling the speed of light. So, by our reckoning, we'd all be long dead by the time they got there, but by their reckoning, they could age very little, depending on how fast they were traveling.
 
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