End of the Space Shuttle/NASA

[Zorkorist]

It's hard to believe, but it appears NASA is done. I'm sure they had projects on the table, but apparenly those have been squashed,

America's Space Exploration, is apparently over.

-John

 

[Skitzer]

RIP

 

[monovillage]

It's only RIP when their budget is zeroed out, and that will never happen. Est. NASA budget for 2012 is 18.7 BILLION dollars.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/feb/HQ_11-041_NASA_Budget.html

 

[dmcowen674]

It's hard to believe, but it appears NASA is done. I'm sure they had projects on the table, but apparenly those have been squashed,

America's Space Exploration, is apparently over.

-John

America is done with manned space flight and Russia rubs it in:

7-22-2011

http://news.yahoo.com/russia-declares-era-soyuz-shuttle-133921047.html

Russia declares 'era of Soyuz' after shuttle



Moscow on Thursday declared it is now "the era of the Soyuz" after the US shuttle's last flight left the Russian system as the sole means for delivering astronauts to the International Space Station.

"From today, the era of the Soyuz has started in manned space flight, the era of reliability," the Russian space agency Roskosmos said in a statement.

Roskosmos expressed its admiration for the shuttle programme, which it said had delivered payloads to space indispensable for construction of the ISS.


"Mankind acknowledges the role of American space ships in exploring the cosmos," it added.


But Roskosmos also used the occasion to tout the virtues of the Soyuz (Union) spacecraft, which unlike the shuttle lands on Earth vertically with the aid of parachutes after leaving orbit.


It said that there was a simple answer to why the Soyuz was still flying after the shuttles retired -- "reliability and not to mention cost efficiency."

 

[Zorkorist]

I don't know what you have against Russia, but they are people like us.

That we fail to achieve space today, is our problem.

-John

 

[Printer Bandit]

glad the dog and pony show (NASA) is finished. back to the real show (secret space program)..........,,>><>><>

 

[Zorkorist]

We have a secret space program?

-John

 

[ericlp]

yup ... outsourcing human space flight... what will we outsource next?

That sum includes 9,000 "direct" space jobs and -- conservatively speaking -- 14,000 "indirect" jobs at hotels, restaurants, retail stores and others that depend on activity at the space center, said Lisa Rice, Brevard Workforce president.

Ah well.... Who needs a job anyway?

 

[Thump553]

It's a sad day but an inevitable one given the shrink the government mood so dominant in the country. As usual, people only want to shrink things that don't effect them.

 

[Paul98]

It's hard to believe, but it appears NASA is done. I'm sure they had projects on the table, but apparenly those have been squashed,

America's Space Exploration, is apparently over.

-John

It's only manned space flight in a NASA space vehicle that is put on hold till something new is built. They still can put up satellites, space probes,... they are still sending up lots of unmanned items. They are just using Russian's to get flights to the space station, and for a hell of a lot less money that it was costing us to send up the space shuttle.

Really manned space flight right now is not very practical, we need a huge advancement in propulsion technology so that we can make these journeys much quicker than we are able to with conventional rockets. Till that happens we aren't really able to send humans on long space missions. The moon would be about as far as we could reasonably get.

 

[Paul98]

But really with how the government was giving out money I would have love to seen a large project put forward for NASA. Something that once finished would open up new possibilities for business.

 

[hal2kilo]

yup ... outsourcing human space flight... what will we outsource next?

That sum includes 9,000 "direct" space jobs and -- conservatively speaking -- 14,000 "indirect" jobs at hotels, restaurants, retail stores and others that depend on activity at the space center, said Lisa Rice, Brevard Workforce president.

Ah well.... Who needs a job anyway?

I hope the Doll House doesn't close. Lap dance anyone?

 

[CaptnKirk]

http://nasawatch.com/archives/2011/07/rejoice-comrade.html

meanwhile, back at the ranch, grandma is beating off the indians

http://www.floridatoday.com/article...rss07/Layoffs-under-way-United-Space-Alliance

 

[Paratus]

It's hard to believe, but it appears NASA is done. I'm sure they had projects on the table, but apparenly those have been squashed,

America's Space Exploration, is apparently over.

-John

Where did you hear all of NASA was done? Ijust poked my head into Mission Control and all of my ISS telemetry is still coming down....

Strange huh.......

 

[Kadarin]

America in decline

 

[werepossum]

It's only RIP when their budget is zeroed out, and that will never happen. Est. NASA budget for 2012 is 18.7 BILLION dollars.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/feb/HQ_11-041_NASA_Budget.html

They still have important missions with satellites and unmanned probes - not to mention the all-important work of making Muslims feel more self-important and changing historical temperatures to support CAGW. Hey, those numbers ain't gonna change themselves!

It's sad for national prestige, but no point in continuing to support a dangerous, expensive mistake. Hopefully we'll get our financial house in order, our economy will recover, and we'll have a nice shiny new system to launch men into space.

And as Paul98 says, we really need to develop new technology before we can practically replace unmanned probes with manned space flight for most of the solar system. Really, we haven't actually lost so terribly much.

 

[gevorg]

NASA should build their own manned rockets like Soyuz, for now. Cheaper than Shuttle, and more reliable than Shuttle (based on history since 1981). Once economy recovers and better technologies are created (nanotech, supercomputer simulation for space technologies, ultra durable and lightweight materials, etc), then build a completely a new reusable space vehicle.

 

[JSt0rm]

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

^^ this is awesome. Hopefully funding for it stays strong.

NASA is moving into robotics and unmanned flights. It makes more economical sense and when we have a reason to send someone to mars or whatever we can do it. I was listening on npr and I think it was Bill Nye or whatever and he said a manned flight of 7 people to mars would cost us 600 billion dollars. Redoing the entire highway system would be like 60 billion. We dont need that right now. We have plenty of unanswered questions that can be done without the sexy.

 

[JSt0rm]

oh and after hearing those numbers I love it that Retard Bush called on nasa to send a manned flight to mars. Like what kind of idiot did he think he was? Just pulling stump speeches out of his ass.