Nicely said. I'm all for a mission to Mars, right after our fifth year of balanced budgets/paying down the national debt. Right now we need to continue the unmanned probe missions which have so much bang for the buck, but I'd really hate to see a future where we settle for squatting dirtside amongst our dwindling resources while ignoring manned space travel.The shuttle was supposed to deliver cheap, reliable and safe transportation to low-earth orbit. It failed at all three of those goals.
The Hubble servicing missions were an amazing accomplishment, but that's also pretty much the only unique capability that the shuttle had. It pains me to say this but in the grand scheme of things we would've been better off just building new orbital telescopes rather than servicing the existing one.
I'm a supporter of manned spaceflight but I think that we need to be honest about the fact that it is not and never will be the most efficient way to accomplish science in space. The reason I support sending people up is because I believe that human exploration of the unknown is a worthy goal in and of itself, even if it's not the most efficient way to gather data. The problem with the shuttle was that it couldn't explore anything.
America has about 40 years left before we go the way of the Soviet Union.
Nicely said. I'm all for a mission to Mars, right after our fifth year of balanced budgets/paying down the national debt. Right now we need to continue the unmanned probe missions which have so much bang for the buck, but I'd really hate to see a future where we settle for squatting dirtside amongst our dwindling resources while ignoring manned space travel.
That's a very, very good point. I'd like to see more mega telescopes sent into space, but until we've actually been there we have no clue to what extent (if any) our conclusions reflect reality.The frustrating thing that I have is that I don't know if unmanned probe's are sometimes all that they are cracked up to be. The US had a lot of in-accurate theories on the moon until the Apollo space program landed on the surface. Nasa had sent as series of un-manned probes to the moon. However it was actually landing humans on the moon when knowledge grew by leaps and bounds. The Soviets sent several probes to the moon and where able to bring a little over 1lb of Moon material back. During the 6xApollo Missions that landed on the surface we brought back over 800lbs of Moon material back and signficiantly increased or understanding of the moon. I would expect that a manned expidition to Mars would also increase the understanding of Mars by leaps and bounds. Un-manned probes have their place by they are not the end all. Nothing can beat like what they did with Apollo 17 when they landed a trained PHd Geologist on the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_H._Schmitt
I wouldn't go that far,in fact, one of the bright spots for the Space Shuttle program was fixing the Hubble Telescope.
Un-manned probes have their place by they are not the end all. Nothing can beat like what they did with Apollo 17 when they landed a trained PHd Geologist on the moon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_H._Schmitt
That's a very, very good point. I'd like to see more mega telescopes sent into space, but until we've actually been there we have no clue to what extent (if any) our conclusions reflect reality.
The shuttle was a vehicle that over 90% of it's takeoff weight was fuel
and it was built by the lowest bidder.
Why would you be embarrassed?
Bush said we had to shut down the Shuttle fleet and we did so what's the problem?
So we spent $100 billion (in today's money) to send a single real scientist to the moon? Value not found.
Don't get me wrong, I believe that Apollo was one of America's greatest accomplishments but I'm also honest about the fact that if our objective was just to gather as much scientific data about the moon as possible then sending people wasn't the most efficient way to do it. Also, robotic probes are much more capable today than they were 40 years ago. Skylab made huge contributions to our understanding of the Sun because of the observations that were made with the Apollo Telescope Mount. Human operators were needed to make observations with it and spacewalking astronauts had to change the film on it. Nowadays that could all be done by an unmanned satellite.
The space program has been withering for decades. The shuttle was a failure from the start but inertia kept it going despite the fact that it served no real purpose. By the late 1980s we should have started work on a shuttle successor, instead NASA kept on rehashing plans for an equally purposeless space station. It is a good thing that the shuttle is gone, what's shameful is that we didn't replace it with something better.
NASA's Space Program is one of the few, if not the only, Federal program to actually paid for itself in new consumer products brought to the market place.
Nasa did try a shuttle replacement X-33 DynaSoar but it was canceled. Nasa probably would have been better of leveraging the Saturn launch system instead of spending money a completely new launch system.
That's really, really debatable. What consumer products have come about as a result of the space program (do not say Teflon or microwave ovens, that's a myth.)
Plenty, from tools to clothing to water filtration. Also materials such as scratch resistant plastic, concrete/runway construction, and that memory foam everyone sleeps on.
They really did invent a lot of technology that is now commonplace.
Memory foam was invented by NASA but it had nothing to do with Apollo. It was invented as part of their aeronautics research program. Apollo certainly served as a catalyst for the development of a lot of important technology (the Apollo Guidance Computer comes to mind) but to say that we got more out of it financially than we put in is unsubstantiated nonsense.
That's really, really debatable. What consumer products have come about as a result of the space program (do not say Teflon or microwave ovens, that's a myth.)
America has about 40 years left before we go the way of the Soviet Union.