NASA scientists say they're closer than ever to finding life beyond Earth

originally posted by: tencap77
NASA "Scientists" have trouble finding they're butt with both hands!

SOmebody needs to take they're funding away. They are Useless and Arrogant. Closing NASA would be the smartest thing we could do! Turn it all over to the open market and the military were it belongs. We no one thing for SURE about NASA Scientists they LOVE to LIE. Just like they're Lord and Master, His Majesty, O-bun-wax !

You said "NASA" and "SCIENCE" in the same sentence. Shame on you ! !!!!!!!!!!!!

What a ridiculous post.

You might want to take a look at all the things NASA has achieved in increasing our understanding of the universe. What have you ever achieved that has increased the sum total of human knowledge? I am going to guess not very much.

a reply to: JohnPhoenix

Show me the math equation you used to show life exists.

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: comfortablynumb

This comment or response says so much if you ask me. It doesn't mean governments don't know, maybe some people do but this just shows the excitement of a scientist who would love to find life out there and would not hesitate to share the knowledge.

Perhaps that single particular scientist was sincere in that statement, perhaps not.

Either way, a car crash or unexplained heart attack is easily arranged.

This information when learned, would not be disseminated to the public, no matter how excited to tell us this scientist seems to be.

I'm very curious why people think like you.

Please tell me what would be gained by trying to cover up what would be possibly the greatest scientific discovery in history?

Why wouldn't they want to get truckloads more funding to investigate further?

And why would the US government not want to claim the credit? Why risk letting, say, the Chinese space program make the same discovery and then claim all the credit?

I'm truly curious about the thought process at work here, so could you explain? Is it just "I don't trust the people in charge" or what?

originally posted by: Rob48

What a ridiculous post.

You might want to take a look at all the things NASA has achieved in increasing our understanding of the universe. What have you ever achieved that has increased the sum total of human knowledge? I am going to guess not very much.

When we are done with NASA and the things they contributed maybe we can all get together at a later date to celebrate the things NAZI doctors did to advance our knowledge of medicine.

Extreme comparison aside NASA has done things to advance knowledge, and have done even more to thwart advancements. How many times since the Apollo missions has NASA stated a goal and stuck with it? NASA is stuck in low earth orbit and is to scared to send astronauts anywhere else.

If the European explorers back in the day had that mindset the new world never would have been discovered. Had the wright brothers had that mentality we never would be flying through the sky. We never would have developed submarines, rockets, etc etc etc.

The greater the risk the greater the reward. Stating a goal to go back to the moon, only to see it canceled time after time, only to hear an announcement we are going to Mars, to have it canceled...

NASA is lost in space.

We need a game plan, a long term game plan, and it should include any and all nations who wish to work with us to achieve the goal of putting differences aside and exploring space.

From 1958 up to 2011 NASA's total dollar amount allocated amounts to about $525+ Billion dollars. That is spread out over that time period, resulting in a budget on average of about 9-10 billion a year.

Maybe if we cut subsidies to mega corporations, close tax loopholes, and give NASA and private industries the needed support we might be able to get somewhere.

Absent that the only way the Us is going to get to the Moon or Mars is via catching a ride with China or Russia.

$9 billion a year... Obama just asked Congress for $4 billion for the flood of immigrant issues Obama created on the southern border. How can we take NASA seriously when our own government doesn't?

NASA is more than just human spaceflight.

I'd argue that the biggest contributions NASA science has given the world have NOT come from the human spaceflight program but from planetary science and astrophysics.

Additionally, while it is easy to imagine privitization of human spaceflight it is harder to imagine any company spending billions of its own money to build something like the Hubble, the James Webb or ATLAST telescopes with no commercial payoff.

"The open market" is not the be-all end all solution to everything. If astronomy and physics had been at the mercy of "the open market" we would not have made even 25% of the discoveries we have to date.

Back on topic, regarding the search for life.

The search for life in the universe has taken a back seat to human spaceflight. We'd likely have found it by now had the money which was siphoned off of the astrophysics division for human space flight under Bush (and never fully returned under Obama) had never been siphoned off in the first place. To be fair, funding has increased under Obama but it has not returned to the level it was at before Bush's people made the cuts:

The space agency was faced with a Space Shuttle program that was struggling to return to flight, a proposition that was taking longer and costing more than anticipated. In addition, the Constellation human spaceflight program was gearing up. These two fiscal burdens convinced NASA administrator Mike Griffin to “borrow” funds from the space science division. Those funds have never been returned. Faced with a constrained budget, NASA chose to cut SIM’s funds to the bone. Congress intervened and ordered NASA to continue with SIM. The project continued for five more years, bravely using its trickle of funding to buy down risk. In spite of the odds, the SIM team developed the technology needed to fly the mission. In fact, the technology was so advanced that they were able to propose a faster, better, cheaper version of the original design. This was the SIM-Lite spacecraft. After the expenditure of $600 million, this mission was technologically ready to proceed to construction. Nevertheless, the axe came in 2010, with the recommendation from the latest astrophysics decadal survey, Astro 2010, to discontinue SIM-Lite. What is telling about this event is that the fate of a major exoplanet project was decided by a committee of astronomers with a marginal interest in exoplanets.

For more on this have a read: Future exoplanet missions: NASA and the world (part 2) - The lessons of SIM

a reply to: Xcathdra

I don't understand your point. You seem to be attacking NASA and then right at the end of your post you get to the real issue: NASA is not getting enough funding.

NASA doesn't set its own funding level. It keeps getting funding cut off so is it any wonder that it has to keep cancelling projects?

Even so, calling it "stuck in low earth orbit" is ridiculous. Why send men to Mars for what would necessarily be a very short mission, when we have a big nuclear-powered truck exploring the surface and taking tens of thousands of high-resolution photos over a period of almost two years so far, and counting?

Stuck in low earth orbit? They have probes on the far side of the sun and beyond the edge of the solar system. They have landed on a moon of Saturn and on an asteroid. Juno is on its way to Jupiter as I type and New Horizons will reach Pluto next year.

Hardly practical for manned missions.

An excerpt from the article I linked above:

It illustrates just how little money from NASA actually gets spent on exoplanet research and the search for life.

Even though the subject of exoplanets is very popular with the public, there is little appreciation for how little money NASA invests in this area.


The need for an Exoplanet Exploration Division

That is, they are not safe as long as exoplanet exploration remains within NASA’s Astrophysics division. Perhaps the best thing that John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for science, could do for exoplanet exploration is to create a separate division for it. Right now, this line item is contained within NASA’s Astrophysics Division. In that division, exoplanet exploration occupies a very small wedge. Its budget of $40 million per year is 4% of the Astrophysics budget total of $1 billion (including JWST). This corresponds to only 1% of NASA’s total Science Mission Directorate budget, or a quarter of a percent of NASA’s overall budget. If exoplanet exploration remains in Astrophysics, then it will get nowhere. There are many priorities in Astrophysics that have a higher priority for funding, not the least of which is JWST. After its launch, the dark energy mission WFIRST received the Astro 2010’s endorsement to be NASA’s next astronomy priority. In addition, NASA must fund the de-orbiting of HST later this decade. That effort, with a required backup, will likely cost $200–400 million. In that budget environment, there is little chance that astrophysicists will allow exoplanet exploration to grow, let alone use up a precious flagship slot for an exoplanet mission. If NASA wants to make real progress in this field, it must set up an Exoplanet Exploration division equal in status and importance to the Astrophysics and Planetary Science divisions. This should be done immediately. To get things moving, this new division could be started with a budget of $200 million.

This level would support a robust investment in New Worlds technology, allowing technology development to begin early and in earnest. Within a few years, as the budget for JWST ramps down, the budget for the Exoplanet Exploration division could be increased to $500 million. That funding would then begin to approach the commitment that this new field of science demands. This money could be phased in with contributions from the other science divisions, or with a return of the funds that human spaceflight “borrowed” in 2005. Even at that level, Exoplanet Exploration would still be the lowest funded level in the Science Mission Directorate. Besides funding, the other benefit of an independent exoplanet division is the issue of priority. An independent division, with a budget of $500 million would be able to launch significant exoplanet missions. Also, an exoplanet division could conduct its own decadal survey. Instead of relying on decisions made by a mostly disinterested group, the exoplanet community would have its peers judge the priority of planned missions.

An independent Exoplanet Exploration division could also be given the task of managing the very first robotic interstellar missions. In 2011, Geoff Marcy proposed a robotic mission to Alpha Centauri by the end of this century, as a way to focus high technology efforts at NASA and to serve as an inspiration for the next generation. It is a daunting challenge. To prepare for such a mission, an Exoplanet Exploration division could fund pioneer interstellar missions that could begin sometime in the 2020s . In fact, a group of engineers, affiliated with The Planetary Society, has already proposed a roadmap of increasingly capable interstellar pathfinders utilizing the technique of solar sailing (see “Mind Expansion”, The Space Review, November 21, 2011; “Stepping Lightly to the Stars,” The Planetary Report, March 2012). Both The Planetary Society and NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist are working on projects to test fly these sails. Crewed “world ships” may come someday, but in the meantime, a robotic interstellar pioneer can be launched with technology that is available today, or will soon be within reach.

originally posted by: Rob48
a reply to: Xcathdra

I don't understand your point. You seem to be attacking NASA and then right at the end of your post you get to the real issue: NASA is not getting enough funding.

NASA doesn't set its own funding level. It keeps getting funding cut off so is it any wonder that it has to keep cancelling projects?

Even so, calling it "stuck in low earth orbit" is ridiculous. Why send men to Mars for what would necessarily be a very short mission, when we have a big nuclear-powered truck exploring the surface and taking tens of thousands of high-resolution photos over a period of almost two years so far, and counting?

Stuck in low earth orbit? They have probes on the far side of the sun and beyond the edge of the solar system. They have landed on a moon of Saturn and on an asteroid. Juno is on its way to Jupiter as I type and New Horizons will reach Pluto next year.

Hardly practical for manned missions.

And of course there is the test flight later this year of the Orion spacecraft which was designed to get humans out of low-earth orbit for the first time in decades.

Star for you, great rebuttal.

a reply to: Rob48

NASA does set its own budget, just as every other federal agency does. What happens to the budget request in subsequent meetings between the White House and Congress to get a budget passed is something else entirely.

Further in the last 2 presidencies we have had major initiatives only to die out and not see the light of day, only to have the same promise made by the next president. At this rate, all we are getting is promises, an unrealistic time line delay that spans more than 2 decades, only to have a promise to go somewhere else that we dropped 2 decades prior.

We are running in circles.

As for low earth orbit - absolutely. While probe are important for exploration, human exploration is a must. Probe are extremely limited in what they can do. The lat time humans ventured beyond low earth orbit was the 1960's and the Apollo missions.

Had it not been for the adventurous spirit of our forefathers the new world never would have been settled by Europeans.

Looking at an alien vista taken by a probe on my computer is fine. Seeing it in persons is something else entirely.

Exploration will always be dangerous and will cost lives. There are always going to be explorers who know what the risks are and who are willing to accept them.

Trying to formulate an exploration plan based on safety will never work.

We must go in person. NASA's current focus is nothing more than wasting money.

a reply to: Rob48

What have you ever achieved that has increased the sum total of human knowledge? I am going to guess not very much.

In fairness, if he or i for that matter had access to NASA's total of around $1 Trillion budget and help from almost half a million employees at one time...i dare say both of us would have produced quite a bit that would have enriched the pool of Human knowledge.

Very slightly unfair comparisson between an individual and a national entity swimming in Billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of helping hands mate.

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: Rob48

What have you ever achieved that has increased the sum total of human knowledge? I am going to guess not very much.

In fairness, if he or i for that matter had access to NASA's total of around $1 Trillion budget and help from almost half a million employees at one time...i dare say both of us would have produced quite a bit that would have enriched the pool of Human knowledge.

Very slightly unfair comparisson between an individual and a national entity swimming in Billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of helping hands mate.

Except that he also accused NASA of being incompetent and deceitful:

We no one thing for SURE about NASA Scientists they LOVE to LIE.

This "NASA lies" meme seems to have a lot of traction on this site, but I have yet to see a single shred of evidence for this lying.

The only people lying are the ones making videos claiming to show "NASA cover-ups" that are nothing of the sort. Many are deliberately lying to get YouTube hits, and some may be accidentally lying because they don't understand what they are looking at, but the result is the same.

originally posted by: Wanderer777
We will never find significant life outside our planet. This telescope is just another prime example of money and resources being wasted. So tired of the space programs. They are so pointless. Instead of worrying about what's going on lightyears away and deal with our MANY problems here on Earth.

Whats going on light years away, or might be found there could drastically change things here on earth.

originally posted by: JadeStar

And of course there is the test flight later this year of the Orion spacecraft which was designed to get humans out of low-earth orbit for the first time in decades.

Star for you, great rebuttal.

A program that was announced by Bush and put on the back burner when NASA's attention shifted to something else. It only came back to the front when NASA realized Russia wont supply us with their rockets or shuttling US astronauts to the ISS, creating a 22 month window to replace Russian rockets with US ones.

a reply to: JohnPhoenix

That's like saying since there's 37 trillion cells in my body, there must be a few cancerous ones in there somewhere.

originally posted by: MysterX
a reply to: Rob48

What have you ever achieved that has increased the sum total of human knowledge? I am going to guess not very much.

In fairness, if he or i for that matter had access to NASA's total of around $1 Trillion budget

I stopped reading right there. Clearly you don't know what you're talking about.

NASA's budget is no where near a Trillion dollars. It"s around $17 billion. Which is far smaller that a ton of other federal agencies / programs and the 4 branches of the military.

To put that in perspective, that's less than 0.5% percent of the total federal budget.

If you're going to come to a discussion at least have valid numbers.

www.penny4nasa.org...

originally posted by: Xcathdra

originally posted by: JadeStar

And of course there is the test flight later this year of the Orion spacecraft which was designed to get humans out of low-earth orbit for the first time in decades.

Star for you, great rebuttal.

A program that was announced by Bush and put on the back burner when NASA's attention shifted to something else. It only came back to the front when NASA realized Russia wont supply us with their rockets or shuttling US astronauts to the ISS, creating a 22 month window to replace Russian rockets with US ones.

Wrong. Completely.

SMH.

The plan has always been to have a capability for beyond low Earth orbit. The Orion program has undergone name and design changes but it was never "on the back burner" because it was well known that the Shuttle program was being retired so that funding could be used to build Constellation/Aries/Orion. Programs like this take years, sometimes decades of development. They aren't suddenly put into action on a whim.

Some of us pay a lot more attention to this stuff.

originally posted by: Rob48
This "NASA lies" meme seems to have a lot of traction on this site, but I have yet to see a single shred of evidence for this lying.

The only people lying are the ones making videos claiming to show "NASA cover-ups" that are nothing of the sort. Many are deliberately lying to get YouTube hits, and some may be accidentally lying because they don't understand what they are looking at, but the result is the same.

So true. NASA is probably the most open federal agency in the country. One has to wonder the motivation of people who pretend to want answers to the universe's greatest questions but attack an agency with a tiny budget because usually a) they don't understand what they are doing (uneducated), b) don't like what they are doing (for various reasons), c) are gullible and believe Youtube videos from the "woo woo" crowd.

a reply to: JadeStar


Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961 - Created NASA and put the infrastructure in place for a civilian space program.

John F. Kennedy, 1961-1963 - Announced plans to put a man on the moon - Success.

Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1969 - Refused to provide funding to large scale NASA operations to replace the Apollo program. NASA was placed into the bottle with a tight lid. NASA was never given a clear path for Space once Apollo was done.

Richard M. Nixon, 1969-1974 - Proud of NASA landing on the moon. Nixon then refused to support / provide funding for space stations, continued missions to the moon as well as a manned mission to Mars, which was supposed to be done in or about 1980. Nixon presided over the decrease in NASA's budget, resulting in NASA being forced to slow or completely stop some of their current space programs.

Gerald R. Ford, 1974-1977 - Failed to take an interest in NASA with the exception of the plans for Hubble and the Galileo missions.

Jimmy Carter, 1977-1981 - Had little to no interest in NASA. Reduced the number of Space shuttles NASA wanted to 4, with a 5th to be used as spare parts. He also researched shutting the shuttle program down.

Ronald W. Reagan, 1981-1989 - Gave NASA approval to construct a Space Station (now 15 years in the making from when NASA first wanted to do this). After Challenger Reagan stopped NASA from using the Shuttle for commercial satellite launches. Essentially removing the fees those companies paid to NASA to send their items into space.

George H.W. Bush, 1989-1993 - In 1989 he gave a speech in which he stated he wanted * - Space Station freedom / to go back to the moon / a manned mission to Mars. No funding provided for NASA to complete those goals. In 1990 Bush order a review of NASA goals. It noted again that NASA was over stretched with plans for major missions and no funding to achieve success.

Bill Clinton, 1993-2001 - NASA's budget decreased under Clinton. He wanted to focus on a program to replace the Shuttle program. When the microbe on the Mars meteorite occurred, Clinton pushed for a major space conference to direct NASA's focus. The conference occurred with nothing resulting from it.

George W. Bush, 2001-present - Delayed construction of the ISS, announced plans for increased manned and probe exploration of the Solar System, a manned moon mission to occur in 2020 which would be a lead in for a mission to Mars. Announced the Shuttle program would end in 2010 and directed a plan to replace the shuttle for manned missions.

Obama - Abandoned the plans put in place by the Bush administration, only to announce plans for a manned mission to a comet / asteroid / hunk of rock. He canceled plans that NASA invested money in, only to reinvent the wheel a few years later. He is discussing manned mission to the moon and to mars, which he aid could be completed by 2030.

See the issue yet?


Source

The last ten Presidents have set lofty goals for NASA while failing to provide a means to fulfill those goals. We have Presidents announcing plans, which are canceled by the next President, only to be reinvented by a succeeding President.

We reinvent the NASA wheel every other year / every election of a new President / incumbent President.

What had been planned from the start of NASA, and had those plans been funded and supported by the following Presidents, we would have large space stations in place, be on the moon and have men on Mars.

Instead, we have low earth orbit achievement for manned mission and probe missions for planets.

Yes - NASA is lost in space and each time we have an election the plan for NASA gets "reset".

a reply to: JohnPhoenix

Hmm 2 trillion x 100 billion.. I have no clue how to write that and it seems Google comes up with "2e+23" whatever that means.. I doubt this post has enough space for all the zeros I'd need LOL

It means 2 with 23 zeros after it. Or:

200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

originally posted by: Xcathdra


Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1961 - Created NASA and put the infrastructure in place for a civilian space program.

John F. Kennedy, 1961-1963 - Announced plans to put a man on the moon - Success.

Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963-1969 - Refused to provide funding to large scale NASA operations to replace the Apollo program. NASA was placed into the bottle with a tight lid. NASA was never given a clear path for Space once Apollo was done.

Richard M. Nixon, 1969-1974 - Proud of NASA landing on the moon. Nixon then refused to support / provide funding for space stations, continued missions to the moon as well as a manned mission to Mars, which was supposed to be done in or about 1980. Nixon presided over the decrease in NASA's budget, resulting in NASA being forced to slow or completely stop some of their current space programs.

von Braun's Mars missions plans were de-funded, his Saturn V's were defunded, his space station & moon base plans were de-funded.... von Braun got cancer in 1973 and died by 1977... but not before telling Carol Rosin about the sequence of threats.

Additionally, the Russians have never been above 475km in space altitude, a record they made way back in 1965.

NASA scientists must know about the von Braun threat sequence... they want us to cling to what they say... NASA has us trained to cling to what they say... but I think we will see asteroids before we see E.T.'s