The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped - TIME.com Article

[BatmanNate]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish

Originally posted by: BatmanNate
It's disgusting how many people here don't value the concept of exploration. The things we've learned about physics as a result of the space program are plentiful, which brings us closer and closer to understanding how the universe works. With greater understanding we are able to study ideas like gravity, time, neutrinos, and other forces at work in the universe so as to one day harness them in useful technologies for the betterment of mankind. Historically the field of science has always had more than a few enemies among the ignorant, and it's sad that even today so many question the value of stepping into the unknown looking for answers. Would you prefer we freeze all advancement and focus all attention inwards when there is a whole universe yet unexplored?

Unfortunately, there's a whole universe to be explored both inwards and outwards...

There needs to be a common ground and some cooperation.

amish

Definately.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Have we seen any real fruits of our labor in the space department? doesn't really seem like it.

Seems like we could be using our resources for much better things

All the technologies that had to be developed into creating the program. The problem is, NASA doesn't have a big enough budget to further the research and build better vehicles. Their budget has been skimmed so badly that all they can do is maintain their old stuff.

 

[lupy]

A much cheaper way to get to space would be a space elevator, think about it, you don't have to worry about anything, just step inside the elevator and half an hour later you are in space.

 

[Electric Amish]

Originally posted by: lupy
A much cheaper way to get to space would be a space elevator, think about it, you don't have to worry about anything, just step inside the elevator and half an hour later you are in space.

Nothing to worry about?? I think that's an understatement.

You just don't have to worry about blowing up.

There's still a TON of risks.

amish

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: Electric Amish

Originally posted by: lupy
A much cheaper way to get to space would be a space elevator, think about it, you don't have to worry about anything, just step inside the elevator and half an hour later you are in space.

Nothing to worry about?? I think that's an understatement.

You just don't have to worry about blowing up.

There's still a TON of risks.

amish

It can fall over and crush half the world on the way down.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: lupy
A much cheaper way to get to space would be a space elevator, think about it, you don't have to worry about anything, just step inside the elevator and half an hour later you are in space.

The tower of Babel...


Just imagine the total gravitational forces on that elevator... combined with the exponential force of the slight shift in wind... heck, even the moon's orbit would cause that thing to fall over.


I think instead of sending people up, then back down, we should just send stuff up, build, send people up, and colonize space. Why do we keep bringing them back... supply ships could be unmanned and much more efficient since they wouldn't need oxgen or living quarters, just a cargo area and Auto Pilot.

 

[Adul]

Originally posted by: tcsenter

i hope not, because i think nasa has done great things for humanity in general and i'm usually for trying to do as much as possible, but i can admit that it's possible that we could have 20 years of research and advancement to do here first before we can go up into space properly. whatever the case, i'd like to see real dialogue before people say knee-jerk that nasa is useless or vital.

The real issue is this:

Space flight is not inherently valuable, no more than terrestrial flight is inherently valuable. The value of any flight is to get you somewhere, there must be some kind of desired destination. Just flying for the sake of flying may be fun and thrilling, but its also extremely expensive. When the money is coming out of the public treasury, for the purpose of public benefit, we should hope the expenditure of public resources promises to deliver something which accomplishes a little more than giving some astronauts a fun and thrilling ride.

The NEAREST thing of any compelling interest is Alpha Centauri, which is only the 'stone's throw' distance of 4.35 light years from earth. That's 25.5 trillion miles, give or take. At an ambitious and currently unattainable speed of 100,000 miles per hour, it would take a tad more than 29,000 years (twenty nine thousand) to reach Alpha Centauri, presuming there is anything of interest there.

But let's be REEEL ambitious and suppose we can find propulsion to deliver 300,000 miles per hour. Well, that's makes all the difference, because our E.T.A. to Alpha Centauri has dramatically decreased to a miniscule 9700 years (nine thousand seven hundred). But hey, let's be even more ambitious, at one million miles per hour, we could 'hop on over' to Alpha Centauri in just under 3,000 years (three thousand).

That's presuming there is something there of interest, and it better be damned good, like a perfectly inhabitable planet that isn't spoken for by its current inhabitants, the odds of which even by the most optimistic "science fiction novel" estimates is on the level of one in a few billion.

Even if we could have started our space program 100 years ago with our current body of accumulated technological knowledge, and spending three times what we currently spend, we probably wouldn't be able to make the trip by the turn of the 22nd century.

IOW, the "Trekkies" with their fanciful science fiction dreams want us to divert precious hundreds of billions, even trillions over the next 50 - 100 years, away from other needy causes so that we can pursue what amounts by any rational standard to be a "shot in the dark".

Ooookay!

And if we get to Alpha Centauri and nobody is home?

if columbus had that attitude, i could imagine things would be very different.

 

[rh71]

Is the Segway inventor dude up for a new challenge ?

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: lupy
A much cheaper way to get to space would be a space elevator, think about it, you don't have to worry about anything, just step inside the elevator and half an hour later you are in space.

Sure, just put in an order for several thousand tons of unobtanium, and move a sizable asteroid into super-sync. Even if you have all that, there is still the issue of actually building it. And then let's not forget the issue of orbital debris & other satellites. It's a nice fantasy ... see Clarke's Fountains of Paradise for a good story, but not anytime soon.

Wouldn't be half an hour either ... even if you could go up that cable at 100 Km/hr, it would be 1.5 to 2 hours just to LEO. GEO would be 420 hours one way.

 

[MemnochtheDevil]

A space elevator is a long ways away, nice theory way beyond current tech. NASA does need more money to develop a shuttle replacement for 10 years down the road. We've been cutting money from space budgets for too long.

Someone remind me again why we need to spend billions on a missle defense that won't shoot down dummy targets? Thats my program that needs to be cut back. It's much easier to smuggle a warhead in than fire it on a missle. Plus any country that it's fired out of knows we will obliterate them in retaliation...

 

[blakeatwork]

So why don't we take babysteps then...

The ISS is not the answer... What we need is to be able to have a life-sustaining environment, probably on the moon as it would make the most sense... Use the ISS as a launchpad/building yard for further exploration, as it reduces the need of a huge burst of energy to escape Earth's gravity field... Yes, that means we need some sort of renewable/non-consuamable energy source to power the rockets/shuttles/ships/whatever, but half the battle is getting into space itself.. I'm pretty sure they can develop a safer means of re-entry... perhaps a small 'pod' designed for extreme temperatures...

I dunno, just ideas..

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Have we seen any real fruits of our labor in the space department? doesn't really seem like it.

You like your lithium ion rechargeable batteries? Those were developed for the space program. How about a digital flash X-ray imager that is used in bone-density scans and mammography? Again, originally developed for and by NASA. The benefits of the space program are found everywhere, it's just that their application is generally transparent to the average man. NASA's aerodynamic research is at work in every new car on the road today, but people don't realise that. Just because you can't think of a benefit of the space program doesn't mean that the benefit doesn't exist.

ZV

 

[Gunnar]

Hmm, budget could be spent on better things? How about the billions that go to maintain our current nuclear arsenal? Or the billions that go to keep our chemical weapons from killing us?

Sad as it seems, most the money in this nation, or the entire world, go to ill and petty causes. Like suing your neighbor for not cutting their lawn short enough, companies suing each other to preserve some market share, an advertising campaign featuring Britney Spears in a tank top.

I dont think that humanity is cut out for this exploration stuff, were still the little monkeys clubbing each other for a shiny object. If you honestly think that cutting the space program is going to benefit the country or world in any way, you are sadly mistaken. It would not solve anything, the money would be used for far less noble schemes. Its being spent to explore the universe, and snap pictures of galaxies, would at least help us understand the universe of which we are only a 1/10000000000000000000000000000^99 of.

I dont think we'll ever come out of the dark ages until we solve some of the world's basic problems of religion, overpopulation, and money.

 

[MaxDepth]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile

Originally posted by: Maleficus
Have we seen any real fruits of our labor in the space department? doesn't really seem like it.

Seems like we could be using our resources for much better things

We wouldn't have velcro, microwaves, and many other things had it not been for the space program.

space program my ass

The microwave oven did not come about as a result of someone trying to find a better, faster way to cook. It was discovered that microwaves could cook food. Called the Radar Range, the first microwave oven to go on the market was roughly as large and heavy as a refrigerator (see picture, below).

The idea of using microwave energy to cook food was accidentally discovered by Percy LeBaron Spencer of the Raytheon Company when he found that radar waves had melted a candy bar in his pocket. Experiments showed that microwave heating could raise the internal temperature of many foods far more rapidly than a conventional oven.

The first microwave ovenThe first Raytheon commercial microwave oven was the 1161 Radarange, which was marketed in 1954.

Have you all forgotten the goodness that is TANG!

 

[KC5AV]

Originally posted by: rahvin
Before you all forget, the Microprocessor and the revolution it started was invented solely to lighten the computers and make travel to the moon possible.

Hey, let's not forget Tang...

 

[Nitemare]

Originally posted by: Evadman

Originally posted by: Electric Amish

Originally posted by: lupy
A much cheaper way to get to space would be a space elevator, think about it, you don't have to worry about anything, just step inside the elevator and half an hour later you are in space.

Nothing to worry about?? I think that's an understatement.

You just don't have to worry about blowing up.

There's still a TON of risks.

amish

It can fall over and crush half the world on the way down.

worse yet you can get in it with a kid who pushes all the buttons

 

[tcsenter]

if columbus had that attitude, i could imagine things would be very different.

There is a big difference, Columbus didn't have to build something which did not yet exist to obtain capabilities that were exponentially greater than they already had in order to travel to new places which in all probability did not exist. They just built a boat of the common type used in the day and set sail. There was nothing even particularly 'ambitious' about Columbus' trip. Risky, yes. But no more risky than navigating any other uncharted waters.

Its good to keep an open mind, but there exists such a condition as having one's mind so open that their brain falls out. Possible != probable or likely.

 

[tcsenter]

The ISS is not the answer... What we need is to be able to have a life-sustaining environment, probably on the moon as it would make the most sense...

lol! I've got one word for you: "Biosphere".

We can't even build a self-sustaining and life-supporting habitat enclosure ON OUR OWN FREAKING PLANET.

 

[C'DaleRider]

Space flight is not inherently valuable, no more than terrestrial flight is inherently valuable. The value of any flight is to get you somewhere, there must be some kind of desired destination.

I'd debate the terrestial flight is not inherently valuable assertation. Millions of business travelers find flying to be a MOST VALUABLE asset. Ask most modern business leaders and they would virtually all agree without flying most of our business would become more expensive. Flying cuts down on travel time, time that is very valuable. Instead of hours going from NY to Europe, we'd have days to float our way across. Flying is extremely valuable........and since business travelers are the vast majority of flyers, it's not the destination that's so important, it's the time saved.

Ive always been a supported of manned space flight, but the shuttle concept was flawed from the start. We need a big dumb reliable booster.

Well, we had one called the Saturn V. Unfortunately, in the zeal to pursue a war we couldn't win, the ever glorious Republican team of Nixon/Ford began the stripping of NASA, first by cancelling all Apollo flights beyond 17, and then cancelling the "need" for further development of a "dumb" booster. NASA's response to the budget cutting then going on was to come out with a reusable vehicle, something the Repub. in charge looked a bit more kindly upon (more cost effective presumably), he and his wife in her "Republican cloth coat."

 

[tcsenter]

I'd debate the terrestial flight is not inherently valuable assertation.

Well you might, but you won't do so very well.

Flying is extremely valuable........and since business travelers are the vast majority of flyers, it's not the destination that's so important, it's the time saved.

Yes, flying is extremely valuable, RELATIVE to some destination. Ergo, flight itself - flying for the sake of flying - is not inherently valuable, except for fun and excitement. There must be a purpose relative to flight.

 

[Dudd]

And in case you like that article, check out the authors weekly football column!.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: C'DaleRider

Space flight is not inherently valuable, no more than terrestrial flight is inherently valuable. The value of any flight is to get you somewhere, there must be some kind of desired destination.

I'd debate the terrestial flight is not inherently valuable assertation. Millions of business travelers find flying to be a MOST VALUABLE asset. Ask most modern business leaders and they would virtually all agree without flying most of our business would become more expensive. Flying cuts down on travel time, time that is very valuable. Instead of hours going from NY to Europe, we'd have days to float our way across. Flying is extremely valuable........and since business travelers are the vast majority of flyers, it's not the destination that's so important, it's the time saved.

Ive always been a supported of manned space flight, but the shuttle concept was flawed from the start. We need a big dumb reliable booster.

Well, we had one called the Saturn V. Unfortunately, in the zeal to pursue a war we couldn't win, the ever glorious Republican team of Nixon/Ford began the stripping of NASA, first by cancelling all Apollo flights beyond 17, and then cancelling the "need" for further development of a "dumb" booster. NASA's response to the budget cutting then going on was to come out with a reusable vehicle, something the Repub. in charge looked a bit more kindly upon (more cost effective presumably), he and his wife in her "Republican cloth coat."

Yep the good old Saturn. You point a finger at the real problem. Politicians do not care for science as a rule. It is a political tool like everything else. Therefore they will "design" something that really isnt what it could have been at all. NASA being a government agency responded as it was ordered too, but played the game by understating costs. NASA lied, or should have known better TCO. The shuttle is a result of political infighting and opportunism. FYI for those who do not know, it costs 100 times as much to get a given payload into space than it was claimed. Seems upkeep and ground facilities costs were not well factored into the equasion. Good ole US politicians and bureaucracies

 

[Zebo]

Welfare for scientists, engineers and big ass companies who get the *intellectual property* for free.

 

[Sahakiel]

What astounds me is the sheer ignorance exuded by several posts in this thread. The U.S. shuttle system was a disaster waiting to happen. My only reaction to the tragedy on Saturday was "It finally happened. Thank God it took this long."

Above all else, NASA is one of the most underfunded agencies in the history of mankind. NASA has been lobbying Congress for more funds every year because NASA as a whole is about 15 years behind on their maintainence. Every year Congress responds by cutting more money to be used on exotic technologies like Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense. Why? Because ABM systems are "sexy" and the space program has fallen out of the public consciousness. It's not as if everything over at NASA has been blissfully great with perfect records across the board. There's a reason their computer systems are so outdated your pocket calculator could probably do better. Anyone who knew anything about the space program has been inwardly cringing at the thought that one day, the Challenger crew is going to have bedfellows. I don't condemn NASA for losing seven more astronauts, especially Israel's first (bummer). I congradulate them for keeping tragedy at bay for so long with so little.

Yes, NASA should've developed a new shuttle system. Yes, the Russians developed dumb boosters far beyond the capabilities of the Saturn V. Yes, the Saturn V was the system used to put a few men on the Moon, one of whom flubbed his one-liner.
No, the reason you cannot just keep men in orbit is because their health deteriorates the longer they're up there. Russians have a reputation for living in space for a year or two as compared to NASA's best at a few months. Unfortunately, their muscles are so weak, that after coming back to Earth it takes weeks of rehabilitation to even get the strength to stand up and walk. That's what ISS is for, anyway. It's a giant floating experimental laboratory studying how to keep humans alive in space. Granted, you're not sending anybody up to sit around all day, so other projects are ongoing as well.

Those of you who say the space program is a waste of money and should be scrapped are merely pleading ignorance. Yes, experiments can be done on Earth, and yes, you can do them in a vacuum with very low temperatures. However, where on Earth are you going to find a laboratory that can simulate 0 G for any extended period of time? The future of humanity lies in space, as shown by the increasing population and resource consumption. Space travel is inherently hazardous with enough radiation to kill you in minutes assuming you can survive the almost 0 pressure and 5 K ambient temperatures. Expanding humanity beyond the scope of this wee planet requires baby steps, unless you'd like to lose half a billion dollars and seven astronauts every week because you're trying to get to Mars on the first try.

On the other hand, humanity is Earth's creature and those of you who would advocate shutting down the program and reallocating resources elsewhere do have a point. We should take care of our overpopulation problem and rampant disease first before trying to set up colonies. Of course, space travel would go a long ways to fixing most of those problems, but nobody wants to allocate more than a few billion to the project. Better to spend hundreds of billions on "sexier" projects that flub almost from the outset. (Can we say "Star Wars"?)

On second thought, another way to solve humanity's population and resource problems almost as well as the space program would be a world war simliar to WWI but larger in scope. If you essentially wipe out every man between the ages of 16-45, it would go a long ways to making sure there's enough food on the table.