No $1 Billion Boost for NASA Budget

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw


Actually I am a happy go lucky kind of guy that enjoys life, my post was simply a state of mind that people in general seem to have , its self defeating to have a loathsome attitude that cries doom and gloom all the time as thats all you'll feel , and then thats all you'll portray, oh but I DO look forward to death, it is another part of life, one that I'M NOT afraid of.

If you feel that I am wallowing in self pity and that I crave death then you are very sadly mistaken and obviously DO NOT know anyone at all.
People seem to want war more than anything else, sure they moan about war all the time, but they never do anything positive, they never do anything for the far future, they can't see past tomorrow, they are not prepared to do anything except complain, and that itself it the human tradegy.
If Nasa was as a far thinking agency its supposed to proclaim they would fight for the funding, of course they'll keep launching the spy satelites though.

A cotton candy world is never going to happen in our lifetime, I can accept that, its a shame that others can't.

Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
For about the last five years I have thought that NASA never intended to build orion or the Ares launchers and that they were planning to use private companys like Space X from day one. The whole Orion/Ares thing has been misdirection from the get go.

The fate of the Ares 1 and the Orion space craft are yet to be determined. But even if they are cancelled, I don't see how it can be considered evidence that it was a misdirection from the beginning.

...but we still need a heavy lift rocket if we want to go to the Moon or anywhere else beyond LEO (circling Earth).

Actually you don't necessarily need a heavy lift rocket. One could put everything into orbit on multiple smaller rockets.

We would also need NASA to pay for things that wouldn't make a profit or need a jumpstart, like a Moon base going to an asteroid or anything else. It could take a very long time for private industry to accomplish these things on their own.

Yeah there definitely still needs to be a lot of Government involvement in space since there isn't much profit to be had at this time. I think the private industry will only be launching payloads (be it crew, cargo or satellites) for others for the foreseeable future.

Originally posted by jra
The fate of the Ares 1 and the Orion space craft are yet to be determined. But even if they are cancelled, I don't see how it can be considered evidence that it was a misdirection from the beginning.

It's not 100% proof of misdirection, but it does support my theory.

If the government needs a van they don't build one from the ground up, they just buy one from GM. The same thing here. Why would they build a rocket like Ares 1 when they can just pay for a ride on a falcon?

The Orion capsule is a fars. They have claimed from day one that it will be the space craft that will take us to the Moon and on to Mars. The truth is that all it would do is ferry people from Earth to LEO. To go to Mars we would need way more than a tin can like that. Even in the Apollo days the capsule was only a small part of the vehicle that took us to the Moon and back. The capsule part of the Apollo missions was just the taxi that took us from Earth to LEO and back. Orion would be no different. So again why build a capsule from the ground up when they can just buy one off the shelf from SpaceX?

Accrding to the article in the OP the Dragon (the capsule made by SpaceX) will be ready at about the same time that Orion should have been. So they havn't done much more with Orion other than to drop a mock up (fake/prop) into the ocean. I find the time lines interesting. The whole "gap" that people have been talking about for the last five years (between the retirement of the space shuttle and debut of Orion) never existed. There never was a gap!!! We will just use the Dragon, like we planned to do from the beginning.

Actually you don't necessarily need a heavy lift rocket. One could put everything into orbit on multiple smaller rockets.

I agree. If another country gets close to going to the Moon (or private industry for that matter) we will beat them to it. We'll just buy the components from the private sector on the cheap and be there in no time. We just don't want to initiate a race because we want to stall as long as we can. The longer other countries aren't going there is no need to show our cards.

Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
...The Orion capsule is a fars. They have claimed from day one that it will be the space craft that will take us to the Moon and on to Mars. The truth is that all it would do is ferry people from Earth to LEO. To go to Mars we would need way more than a tin can like that.

I never read a plan the called for using the Orion for the cruise to Mars. In NASA's (very) preliminary plans to go to Mars, the Mars cruise vehicle would be relatively large and constructed in orbit from multiple Heavy-Lift (Ares V) launches.

For a Mars Mission, the Orion is only meant to take the astronauts into Earth orbit to the waiting Mars cruise vehicle and return them from Earth orbit once the mission was completed.

[edit on 1/27/2010 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Soylent Green Is People


That's what I'm saying. It is basically the same thing as the Dragon. So why build it from scratch when you can just buy it from SpaceX?

I'm not going to search for examples, but I've heard for about 5 years that it "would be the vehicle that takes us back to the Moon and on to Mars". Technically they are correct because it would be a key component, but like you said it is just a small part. They would also need a large area for people to move around in. You can't have people cramped up in a capsule for 6 months. That's where Bigelow comes in... they'll just buy an inflatable habitat from him.

So like I said, there never was a gap and they never planned on actually building the Ares 1 or the Orion. Or at least that's what I've been thinking for years now, and allthough there is no way to prove my theory, it's working out exactly as I expected.

[edit on 27-1-2010 by fieryjaguarpaw]

From the other thread, my response to this:

I hope this is not true.

So I fired off an email to President Obama about this situation. Here it is, if you consider space exploration to be a higher priority than Climate Change, take a second yourself to let our President know how you feel. Trust me when I say, it IS the very least we can do.

"Way to go there President Obama. Way to send the message to our already struggling youth that choosing careers in science and physics, especially the exciting and MUCH NEEDED field of Space Exploration, is not needed by our country. Way to encourage our youth to set their sail for the outrageous made up field of "climate change". President Obama, when I was growing up in the 70's we used to call what yall are calling Climate Change, WEATHER.

How shameful for you to divert the Nasa Moon Mission money to the charlatan fronted/filled field of Climate Change. How little you must think of our children, including your own.

I hope that this article, where my information originated, is completely untrue, and that there is still time to reverse this short sighted act.

www.orlandosentinel.com...

Thank you, please clarify the situation regarding funding for space exploration, and where the 7000 laid off Kennedy Space Center employees will be working. Thank you. "

I was so fired up I forgot to add, I requested a response, of course. And yes, I proudly used my name and address to get my response. I am so tired of our government doing stuff like this.

Originally posted by fieryjaguarpaw
If the government needs a van they don't build one from the ground up, they just buy one from GM. The same thing here. Why would they build a rocket like Ares 1 when they can just pay for a ride on a falcon?

Because that's the way it's always been done. By that I mean the Gov't awarding contracts to various aerospace corporations to build them rockets, spacecrafts and landers etc. Private companies like SpaceX are a very recent development. When the Constellation program was announced back in '04, SpaceX barely existed. The first successful Falcon 1 launch didn't happen until '08. I don't think buying rides on Dragon capsules and Falcon 9's was seen as an option when the Constellation program was first announced.

Even in the Apollo days the capsule was only a small part of the vehicle that took us to the Moon and back. The capsule part of the Apollo missions was just the taxi that took us from Earth to LEO and back. Orion would be no different. So again why build a capsule from the ground up when they can just buy one off the shelf from SpaceX?

The Apollo capsule did more than just go to LEO and back. It went to the Moon as well. The capsule, also referred to as the command module, along with the attached service module was a big part of what got them to the Moon.

Again, when the Constellation program was announced there was no Dragon capsule, not even concept artwork. It wasn't formally announced until early '06 if I remember correctly.

We will just use the Dragon, like we planned to do from the beginning.

I still don't see any evidence to support your claims of the Ares and Orion being a farce or a misdirection. While NASA might drop the Orion in favour of using the Dragon. I don't see that as a sign of it being a misdirection. Simply just a change in plans.

I agree. If another country gets close to going to the Moon (or private industry for that matter) we will beat them to it. We'll just buy the components from the private sector on the cheap and be there in no time. We just don't want to initiate a race because we want to stall as long as we can. The longer other countries aren't going there is no need to show our cards.

I don't agree with that. There currently no components to buy from the private sector to go to the Moon with. Especially not cheaply, if there were, it would have happened already.

I don't understand where you're getting the idea that NASA wants to purposely stall going to the Moon or prevent another race.

[edit on 27-1-2010 by jra]

Originally posted by jra

Because that's the way it's always been done.

exactly!

By that I mean the Gov't awarding contracts to various aerospace corporations to build them rockets, spacecrafts and landers etc. Private companies like SpaceX are a very recent development. When the Constellation program was announced back in '04, SpaceX barely existed.

But they did exist. So at best we can say that both the Constellation program and SpaceX are recent developements

The first successful Falcon 1 launch didn't happen until '08.

Because NASA kept changing what they wanted from SpaceX. If NASA had just said what they wanted from the beggining and stuck to it the Falcon series would have achieveid succes much sooner.

I don't think buying rides on Dragon capsules and Falcon 9's was seen as an option when the Constellation program was first announced.

When it was announced there was no real plan at all, just some speach by Bush. About a year latter we started to see some of the concepts that Boeing and the like were submitting to NASA. Here is one of them:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b5e137e55ebc.jpg[/atsimg]

Around this time NASA finally defined what it was they wanted and it wasn't a winged craft as pictured above. It was a capsule. So at this point it was like starting over from day one. About the same time is when COTS was introduced. This has never added up for me. Why would you be giving money to companys like SpaceX to build the same stuff that you plan to build yourself, when the in house stuff hasn't even been started on?

The Apollo capsule did more than just go to LEO and back. It went to the Moon as well. The capsule, also referred to as the command module, along with the attached service module was a big part of what got them to the Moon.

We are saying the same thing here. I imagine that the Dragon or Orion would fufill the same roll.

Again, when the Constellation program was announced there was no Dragon capsule, not even concept artwork. It wasn't formally announced until early '06 if I remember correctly.

Again when it was announced was years before they even said the design needed to be a capsule. When they said it would be a capsule was more or less the same time they started COTS and SpaceX introduced their concept (including artwork) for Dragon.

I still don't see any evidence to support your claims of the Ares and Orion being a farce or a misdirection. While NASA might drop the Orion in favour of using the Dragon. I don't see that as a sign of it being a misdirection. Simply just a change in plans.

There is no hard evidence. It is just a therory, but It is working out like I expected it to, and look at how very little work has been done on either Ares1 or Orion. Laughable. They have done next to nothing to achieve their stated goal.

I don't agree with that. There currently no components to buy from the private sector to go to the Moon with. Especially not cheaply, if there were, it would have happened already.

Not now, but the time table is almost dead on to what the Constellation program was supposed to follow!!! Dragon will be up and running before the de-orbit of the space station. Armadillo has won the Lunar lander challange. And as an added bonus Bigelow Areospace will have the largest space modules ever up in orbit and ready to go by 2015 ( That's a service module big enough for the trip to Mars!). That's your Lunar mission right there!!! And it looks like all this will happen on the same schedule as the Orion was supposed to have or sooner. And yes cheaper.

I don't understand where you're getting the idea that NASA wants to purposely stall going to the Moon or prevent another race.

It's just a theory, a possible explination for why things are done the way they are. The only other reason is just gross stupidity and unbelievable amounts of red tape. Plus it makes sense to me. If you were a business you wouldn't publish your exact designs for your new product. If I was in charge I might even do the same thing and hold off on a space race untill it couldn't be held off any longer. It makes sense that we would want as much of a head start as possible, and that we wouldn't show our cards until we had to lay them down. I sincerly belive that there is no way that we will let China beet us back to the Moon! When they or anyone else gets even close we will beet them to it. Until then we might as well lay low and not stoke the fires of competition.

reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw


The entirety of NASA has returned little to the citizens that pay for their existence.
Come on folks wake up and smell the coffee.
With all the knowledge available today it is impossible for me to even think a man stood on the moon ever.
Just look at the bucks spent and the accomplishments.
For a gazillios dollars NASA folks can now drink their pee in space.
Folks and animals have been doing that since day one for free.

Well, atleast here on earth and not a couple miles up in low earth orbit .





[edit on 28-1-2010 by Donny 4 million]

Originally posted by Donny 4 million
...With all the knowledge available today it is impossible for me to even think a man stood on the moon ever.

I don't understand your reasoning...
...You are saying that humans today posses a lot of knowledge, but you still don't think we went to the Moon. How does your conclusion (that we didn't go to the Moon) follow from the fact that we possess a lot of knowledge?

For a gazillios dollars NASA folks can now drink their pee in space.
Folks and animals have been doing that since day one for free.

Well, it takes a lot of filtration through the ground and/or the water cycle (evaporation/condensation/precipitation) to make pee drinkable here on Earth to truly state: "Folks and animals have been doing that since day one for free".

The waste-water recycling system made for NASA is vitally important for future long-term manned missions, say to Mars. Without waste-water recycling, the amount of water required for each astronaut on a long-term mission would be prohibitively heavy to carry into space.

I'm only guessing here, but I bet the water needs (without recycling) for, say, 6 Mars Mission astronauts on a 2-1/2 year journey would require an entire launch of a heavy-lift vehicle to get it into space. And then once in space, all that mass of water would need to be pushed to Mars, expelling a lot of fuel.

reply to post by Box of Rain



The American infrastructure is crumbling. It's a matter of priorities.
I would much rather have sturdy bridges than a way to recycle pee.

www.history.com...

Time to put away the star trek, sifi channel Romanticism and get real. IMO


[edit on 28-1-2010 by whaaa]

Originally posted by whaaa
The American infrastructure is crumbling. It's a matter of priorities.
I would much rather have sturdy bridges than a way to recycle pee.

www.history.com...

Time to put away the star trek, sifi channel Romanticism and get real. IMO

I somewhat agree that the U.S. transportation infrastructure needs to be repaired...

...However, it would be nice to be able to do both -- fix infrastructure AND have an active and progressive manned space program. I'm not naive -- I do understand the money is not there to do both (or even one of those, for that matter).

In a perfect world (which, again I'm not so naive that I think we could do this), the defense budget could be slashed in half and the money saved would be able to fund infrastructure improvements and a space program -- and even other things. However, in the real world that can never happen -- not for the foreseeable future, anyway.

The problem with not funding space now is: "well, when is the right time". It can always be argued that there are more pressing needs than a progressive manned space program.

We could wait 50 years for "the right time to fund a manned space program", but that time will never come. Something else will ALWAYS be seen as more important. Using that logic, man will never travel far into space. Space, while not a "top" priority should be something that we find a way to fund, or human existence becomes stagnant.

Humans need to explore/discover...it's what we do.


[edit on 1/28/2010 by Box of Rain]

Originally posted by Donny 4 million
reply to post by fieryjaguarpaw

 

The entirety of NASA has returned little to the citizens that pay for their existence.

Ironic that you type this into a computer and tell me this over the internet. Do you use a cell phone? Do you watch cable TV or even the news on a broadcast station? Ever heard of a weather sattelite? Do you have GPS in your car? I could go on...

Well it's official! Obama has no real plan or goal for space. He wants us to conduct studies on space exploration instead of actually doing it. Enough with these studies already. Havn't we been studying how to explore the solar system for the last 50 years or so. We should be doing things not just writing papers on what we could do.

His only real new direction is to study how carbon effects climate change. What a joke. Doesn't that prove that the science isn't in on global warming! If we are so certain that the weather is determined by how many SUV's are on the road, or how many mecury filled toxic lightbulbs we have screwed in then why are we cancelling our manned space program in order to study how carbon effects the weather.

The biggest problem is that there is no direction... NO GOAL!!! we don't have a path to go down.


Here's a link to some PDF's that explain what they want to do... or lack there of.
www.nasa.gov...