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The NASA thread

sleazenation

10:15 / 24.03.05

OK there are a fair few people here interested in space exploration and the space program in general so I thought it might be fun and interesting to start a thread on the largest space organization in the world, NASA. I figured that ESA, China and the Russian space programs (along with all the others from Brazil to India) could maybe have their own threads...

So, yes, NASA is in a bit of a funding crisis at the moment thanks to the military needing more money to fight its wars. G.W. Bush's grand presidential vision of a mission to Mars has put further strain on the budget. But such grand missions cost a hell of a lot of money, even by NASA standards meaning other projects get sidelined and even prominent legacy projects such as Voyager 2 and the Hubble Space Telescope are being scrapped early despite the valuable science they could continue to do...

So, what do people think about the current state of NASA - what should its priorities be?

Lurid Archive

13:02 / 24.03.05

Trying to find alien life and a thorough exploration of Mars would be both popular and interesting goals. Realistically, this will be continued via the use of probes, but I think that everyone wants to see a manned mission to Mars some time in the next couple of decades.

Unfortunately, funding is going to hold back the more ambitious stuff and I haven't heard of any real deveopments that will significantly reduce operating costs of space travel. A space elevator still seems infeasible and I think a large scale space station that could operate as a docking port and even an assembly facility is probably too much of an initial expenditure. But getting out of the gravity well a little bit more easily has to be the way to go, long term.

Why don't we go and have a look at what NASA are planning?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

12:13 / 25.03.05

I'm not sure where I read it, it might even have been on here, that the reason that NASA haven't done any manned exploration of any worth in the last few decades is because they've been held in an effective stranglehold by those industries that are involved building the space shuttle, which is why we have so many probes sent all over the place and not much else. I'm not too keen on Bush's 'lets go to Mars' plan but to be successful NASA will have to transcend the shuttle with something that could then be used for manned moon missions looking at a manned base on another planet, investigation of the asteroid belt between us and Mars, all kinds of cool stuff.

unheimlich manoeuvre

01:19 / 28.03.05

NRO, Space Command, NASA Tout Common Language Of "Space Supremacy" at Conference. April 11 2002

The blurring of lines between military and civilian resources was omnipresent at the conference. Since the commercial space industry imploded during the 2001 recession, civilian companies and agencies have looked to their old friends in the military for dual-use functions. Many talked at the conference of using space-based technology for the Office of Homeland Defense, though speakers from Boeing and Raytheon warned that there are plenty of civil liberties hurdles they must overcome to use imaging and database technologies to snoop on events in the U.S. In fact, the corporate speakers said that often, their own insurance companies provide bigger blockades to using questionable technologies domestically, than do either the Department of Justice or the Congress.

...

Nice to know the insurance companies are working in our interests.

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