Not a good year to be NASA...
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Looks like NASA will be forced to stop 2 major projects, the Constellation program that called for a return to the moon by 2020, which would also kill the Ares 1 rocket.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013101058.html
I wonder if we'll see interest decline in Sci-Fi because of this? It's a pretty big genre in our industry and it was probably largely inspired by the things NASA was doing when a lot of developers where growing up. If they aren't there to influence kids will we see Sci-Fi take a hit?
Or will we do just as much dreaming but just not a lot of doing?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013101058.html
I wonder if we'll see interest decline in Sci-Fi because of this? It's a pretty big genre in our industry and it was probably largely inspired by the things NASA was doing when a lot of developers where growing up. If they aren't there to influence kids will we see Sci-Fi take a hit?
Or will we do just as much dreaming but just not a lot of doing?
Replies
Honestly though, I could see this being a NASA power play. They probably want to suggest that it would kill the Ares, just to get people to support killing the budget reductions.
Sorry I couldn't resist :P We'll always be dreaming
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/burt_rutan_sees_the_future_of_space.html
QFT
The sooner we expand to other planetoids the safer we will be from extinction. I would very much so like to see a moon, and mars base with populations in the ten thousands. That should be enough genetic variation so that if something were to happen here we would be fine. Besides communication between earth and mars would only be between 3-22min.
I think the future of space travel belongs in the hands of private enterprise anyway. It made sense to have the space program under government control in the 1950s and 60s, but competition and capitalism can probably push the industry faster and cheaper now (the X-Prize, for example.) The Air Force goes to companies like Lockheed and Northrop when they want a new fighter plane, and they get to choose from the best of the best - can't see why the government would need to keep aerospace design in-house.
*edit*
I started typing before Japhir posted, I swear it's true
Private investors are the only hope for advancement in this area, and that is both good and bad.
It is good in that there's less red tape. It is bad because it's more about how are you going to make any money out of it. The good thing about the government's involvement is there's more of a general "explore for the advancement of society and mankind" kind of vibe, which is one reason why there is so much red tape to justify the spending. With private investing, there's gotta be a return in most cases, which then leans more towards a sales pitch if anything else. In a world consumed by the almighty weight of numbered parchment, there's more people wanting to fatten their own wallets than those looking to raise up humanity. Screw going to the moon, get us out of this galaxy.
One thing to remember though... you guys DO realize why it has so many craters, right?
The universe is 13 billion years old
our sun is 4.5 billion years old
Microbes fossils on Earth are 3.5 billion years old
Oldest multicelled are 1 billion
so the universe is pretty young still...
For one, it's not feasible right now, so it's just a giant money hole. We'd be better off spending the money researching alternative energy sources.
For two, why do you care? Do expect to be one of these astronauts? Does it matter less that we wipe ourselves out on this planet, if there are people on other planets? I don't particularly understand why you would rate the continued existence of the human race, over the existence of everyone on earth. Focus on us and our problems. Sending a few people off our planet would accomplish nothing for everyone still here.
yeah... because it has no tectonic activity and hasn't been able to erase the signs of impacts like earth has. We get hit by more space crap than the moon, easily.
What reason does the government have to go to the moon? We're not competing with anyone any more... only private industry really has the incentive to get into space these days. America doesn't care about that crap any more... if one channel has the moon base launch event, and the other has coverage of britney's latest haircut, what do you think most taxpayers are gonna watch?
Nasa lost a lot of their best people to private industry years ago... the new structure is venture capital explores new options, the government and other corporations funds them. We'll be alright.
You don't see how only half the human race dying would be preferable to the entire human race dying? Really?
There's so many disasters that could destroy almost all life on earth, there's been at least 5 on Earth. http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/extinction_sidebar_000907.html
We should keep our technological advancements going. If we have another planet we got a back up. If something happens to Earth we'd have people that could come back and help.
Having one planet isn't safe, and there's no way to protect and defend it besides to be spread out.
It's not slashing the budget like I originally read they've edited their article a few times now... Rather its just not extending funding to get the projects off the ground. The funding was never really there for much more than planning and some unmanned tests.
It seems like the plan is let the Russians and private industry maintain the floating monument to international cooperation so we can hit something bigger and more meaningful, then awesome.
More like we send 100 people out on a big ship that cost us eleventy trillion dollars and we never see or hear from them again. Meanwhile at home, no one gives a shit about those hundred people, but we sure are a little ticked off that money didn't go toward making our planet a better place. We all die, and no I don't think any of us would take the least bit comfort in knowing that oh yay, there are some people elsewhere.
So if we can make sure the "human race" survives by going into space, most humans would probably think that's a good idea
That's a pretty selfish outlook... kind like saying, "if this ship is sinking and I'm gonna die anyway, why bother trying to help launch someone else's life raft?"
And anyway, why can't we do both? Before any budget cuts NASA still had a laughably small budget compared to other less-than-necessary areas of our government (ridiculous military industrial complex anyone? billion dollar pork projects? hello?).
Dunno if you've noticed, but there's not exactly a lot of room for more humans on earth. We're gonna need to get off this planet sooner or later, and at the rate we're growing, sooner would be preferable. Or we can just have a big war or two, or enforce a global birth limit. That sound better to you?
The sooner we start building the technology, the sooner we'll be able to move large numbers of humans around in space. We can't just sit here forever, and that's a fact. The resources here are already being squeezed pretty hard, and the planet's starting to notice. Nobody's saying we need to stop funding schools and foreign aid to do this... but putting money into this would be a pretty big gift for our descendants.
Space pirates ftw!
or at least get to one end and back in a reasonable amount of time.
I'll be honest with you.... Before I had a kid, I could have cared less what happened after I died. Now that I have a kid, I care about the future, so what you're saying couldn't be more right :P
Its my opinion that the human race needs to put forth as much effort as it can to exploring space and space tech. I honestly I can not comprehend why anyone would oppose the human spirit to explore the unknown and challenge its self. Well I can comprehend because the mass majority of people these days want everything for free and feel they are self entitled to it. The need to better ones self and his fellow man is almost completely devoid in today's society. We need to rekindle this spirit, and the best way is to explore the greatest challenge man has ever faced. Space Travel......just take a few minutes to soak that up.
I'm livid about this right now, and when I saw this news I felt like I had just lost a dear family member. Very depressing.
It seems like the general consensus is that space is too far, too expensive, and too empty - especially when compared with the star trek / star wars / battlestar / etc etc universes.
Apart from pure scientific discovery - which is awesome, don't get me wrong - in terms of interest, your average entertainment drone citizen probably ranks nasa somewhere alongside c-span or the weather channel thanks to the constant bombardment of fictionalized intentionally dramatic scifi action/adventure.
So, do you expect your kid to be on that other planet or what? If I were you i'd care about the kid's future on this planet.
Yes, no doubt exploring space would provide a little boost to our spirits. Somehow though, I doubt the starving people in the rest of the world will feel the same.
I'm not trying to say NASA is an evil thing. Yes, it would be nice to explore space. But it's really low on my list of 'important things we should be doing with our tax money'
No, that's like being on a ship with a leak in it, and telling everyone to focus their efforts on making a life raft for one person rather than trying to fix the ship and save everyone.
Yes, space is something we should be watching and exploring, but we have other things to worry about right now. Get the shit straight on Earth before we go leaving :P
Unfortunately, I know the cost would be way too high for that.
BTW, for those who don't realize, China is attempting to go to the moon. I think that's what Bush was trying to compete with.
There is less poverty and disease now then any point in history. Its thinking like this that will get us no where. Its the same thing over and over again. People saying its impossible and can never happen in a thousand years. Do we have to wait for a utopia before we can start looking at how to go faster then light? Has anyone figured if we were able to create self sustaining colonies how this would affect life on earth? If we were to create an infinity renewable energy source for stations and space craft, and how this would help life on earth? How studying the atmosphere of other planets would help us to understand our own? Staying put on earth is stupid tell things are 'fixed'. Space exploration will bring more good to humanity then just staying put and trying to fix the same problems we have had for thousands for years.
A second reason is resources. The first and easiest is helium3 on the moon. There's an infinite amount of solar energy up there, california (I think it's CA at least, someone is definitely doing this) is currently constructing a giant space-based energy collector that will beam 100% clean energy down to ground stations. Applications like this are only the tip of the ice berg. And how did we figure out we could do this? Where did the technology come from? Oh, that's right, NASA and space exploration.
You can't pretend that our earth-based resources can support us forever, especially not at our current rate of growth. Moving out into space, whether it's for energy, raw resources, or expansion, is our ONLY viable long-term option if we want to keep this entire ship from devouring itself.
Robotics are advancing, computers obviously, AI, biotics, genetics all that. In 30 years we might be able to send a small robot to mars, have it construct a facility to build more robots, from there construct some kind of biodome and terraform sections of the planet using technologies completely foriegn to what we currently think is needed to sustain life there. The kicker is we wouldn't even need to send a human to mars, we could stream our genetic code through space once the facilities are ready and just grow the first generation of martians, communicate and raise them with robots. Sounds crazy, but it really isn't that far fetched.
Take it even further and we could start putting our brains in jars and start controlling robotic bodies, requiring less bio sustination and more mechanical sustananation, which would basically just be carbon, metals, and sunlight. Further still, robots replace the biogenetic form, we go pure digital, live in a computer and interact with reality through machine, or just play games which at that point would be 50000x better than drifting through space anyway.
Actually the technology needed to send spacecraft to our nearest interstellar neighbors in a human life time already exists (See: Project Longshot & Project Daedalus); what is preventing us from traveling to Alpha Centauri in such fashion is the immense economic burden of such a project.
I'm sorry you can't understand the "continued existence of humanity", the principle is the same as self preservation.
Your happy solutions to power and population control will come from space exploration.
I'm just getting mad reading all this so I leave you all with a simple quote, and only ask you to think, not about your self, but of others:
"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars." -Stephen Hawking
sucks Obama's plan is proposing to cut back NASA funding, but its gotta get passed in Congress first guys, which could take months, and not get passed at all
It would be awesome to land on Mars with people though. We should send Val Kilmer. Fulfilling our exploratory nature with going to another planet would be amazing; since we've only visited our Moon. As far as "saving ourselves" though, or fixing the planet to make it better - ehhhh dunno. The Earth will be fine, we're the ones who are fucked
[/pessimist]
We can change our planet to make it less fucked up , the thing is its an impossible ideal to move alot of people to do that. Deep space exploration and colonization will only be possible if we solve our shit back home first .
keep in mind, this is based off the same theories that necessitated the creation of some invisible magical "dark matter" filling 80% of the universe for them to actually fit what we've observed. They're already observing things in deep space that appear to move faster than light.
B
There is a new kind of plasma rocket they want to use once they're in space. It would start off slow but keep pushing and the speed would ratchet up because there isn't anything to slow it down, just continual acceleration.
Its not strong enough to be used for launch but its incredibly fuel efficient compared to today's rocket tech, so less to carry up there. Last I heard they where going to install one on the international space station to help reduce the propellants they have to use to keep it from crashing back to earth.
Sci Fi Science did a space travel show a few weeks back and explained this in detail. Yeah, I'm a nerd, I have all the episodes on my DVR
Anyway, nice links Eraserhead.
Everyone, how do we know there aren't humans in other galaxies trying to do the exact same thing we are? Seriously, think about all those infinite galaxies/dimensions out there. (I don't want to turn this all religious...)
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/space/02/01/nasa.budget.moon/index.html
This is a very good thing for NASA. Read more here: http://www.space.com/news/nasa-far-out-plans-100201.html
And yeah, thats right. Inflatable Space Houses is on their to-do list.
There's planets not too far away from us that can support life, I see us exploring space a lot more in the next 100 years. a little over 100 years ago we were just starting to mess with transatlantic communications, now everything is connected and communication is cheap and easy.
It'll be age of discovery once we have another planet. Trade between planets that are rich in rare materials, better city planning, a whole need world to learn about, etc etc.
Faster than light communications seems like one of the most important issues.
Oil couldn't exist on the moon, but if your talking about fuel sources...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
"Helium-3 is proposed as a second-generation fusion fuel for fusion power uses."
Obviously I'm no rocket scientist, but given enough time, I don't see how humanity wouldn't come to inhabiting another planet or the moon. Its bound to happen. My roommate, who was much more of a scholar than I, told me a few times, experts expect the Earth will only be able to sustain a population of ~9 billion... how long will that take to reach?
Regardless, its too bad NASA had their budget cut, I really enjoy the idea of space exploration.
edit - http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/moon-for-sale/ - here is a link to the documentary if anyone is interested.
but even without, a 3-22min* delay of info wouldn't be that bad. Yeah no phone calls, but texts and internet yeah. Oh noes polycount might not get updated for 22min!
*min and max distance between the planets at the speed of light.