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  1. 1. Do you like this poll?

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  2. 2. Should I make a new poll?

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answer choices are quite limited. You dont think that space research has any value? Humans have nothing to gain from exploring past our own Atmosphere?

 

I couldnt imagine not wanting to know more about space and what else is out there in that big, big, big, black cold realm.

 

Interesting topic for a first post \:\)

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And, you dont think that by searching space and beyond our boarders that theres a possibility we can find new answers back here to solve things?

 

I understand your point but dont think something like that is worth wasting your time - especially when endless people are being shot, blown up, and becoming collateral damage in a cowoboys war.

 

I love how its barbarism when we are attacked by terrorist and its collateral damage when we kill them... :rolleyes:

 

Back at ya! wave.gif

 

I do get your point though as its a huge chunk of change eh...

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Come on

You never wanted to be Captain Kirk screwing the green chick in the old Star Trek series

Or the guy that is new to the ship that you know isn't going to be coming back

 

Bring on space exploration. I'm all for it.

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 Quote:
Originally posted by Yamakashi:
And, you dont think that by searching space and beyond our boarders that theres a possibility we can find new answers back here to solve things?
I thing George is searching for God, literally.

George: There is a War On Terror, our way of life, freedom, the internet! We need to get God down to Camp David. NASA, go and get god, hurry up, and get me a hamburger.

NASA: yes, sir! NASA is pleased to have a role in the War On Terror.
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All this talk reminds me of the Purple one

 

 Quote:
Sister killed her baby cuz she could afford 2 feed it

And we're sending people 2 the moon

Then specifically about the Space Shuttle

 

 Quote:

It's silly, no?

When a rocket ship explodes

And everybody still wants 2 fly

Some say a man ain't happy

Unless a man truly dies

Oh why

Time, time

Time to dig that one out again methinks...
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I think it's different to say that the shittle is a waste and that there are better ways of achieving space travel and that space travel is a waste because there are more important endeavours here on earth.

 

When money is spent on a space shuttle, we get two things. Firstly, new technologies that are directly useful result, the main driving factor for new technologies is war (I personally feel that space exploration is more important). Additionally, it is in people's nature to explore and to examine the 'skies' (how many flags have stars or similar on them). The are also ancillary benefits, people take more of an interest in science and

 

Secondly, the money doesn't just disappear. Money goes to other people who can spend it a different way. Large amounts of short term spending which typically follow an increase in space program attention can lead to an increase in economic activity due to the amount of money put into the economy. While it may be possible to argue that other scientific pursuits may have more need for receiving such fiscal benefits, it can be reasoned that having such a tangible, achievable, goal allows greater accountability for funds spent.

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There are a couple of related issues here, manned vs unmanned flight, and the Space Shuttle itself.

 

There's no doubt that the things people do in space could be done as well by machines. Without all the life support systems, thats a bunch of mass that doesn't have to be accelerated into space. The rationalisation for manned flight, is basically adventure. That's OK as long as we recognise what we are paying for.

 

The shuttle itself is grossly wasteful, costing something like 100 times more to fly than initial projections. These were based on a turnround and relaunch on a hopelessly optimistic schedule. It has to be over-engineered to be re-useable, compared with a mission specific vehicle (bunch more mass), as well as a set of wings, control surfaces and landing gear, which all add even more mass.

 

Then there is the design itself. As we have seen, attached to the side of a fuel tank and a set of solid fuel boosters, there is no possibility of escape from any major system failure, or re-entry of a damaged vehicle. Having a pod on the tip of a rocket is much simpler and safer.

 

It's no accident the US military use their own launch vehicles. Their launch budget is spent putting payloads into space as reliably and cheaply as possible, not supporting a bloated public service bureaucracy.

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IMHO, it goes something like this. The Apollo missions sent an effing ginourmous tube of aluminium into space, only to return the pimple on the top. Everything else was either burnt up, or is orbital junk. There was a school of opinion at the time (I was one of them) that something re-usable would be less wasteful. So, political pressure was brought to bear on NASA by the paymaster, and the Shuttle was born. Magnificent!

 

The problem is that the the beast serves a political rather than scientific agenda. The need to be re-usable hopelessly compromises the engineering. Turn around was supposed to be fast, but servicing takes more than checking the fluids and pressures, and giving a wipe down with an oily rag. Instead of a few months these things take years to strip and re-build. At which point, you might ask "considering we are re-building a machine which exists solely to be re-usable, and paying a huge price in the form of excess mass and safety deficiences, couldn't it be done better?".

 

If the engineering problems weren't apparent at the planning stage, they should have been, and they certainly are now. Return to fly is costing $750 million out of a budget of $16 billion. You could try this site: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-03zn1.html

 

FWIW, Scaled Composites put a man into space for $20 million. If you want to know what it is like to fly a spaceship, go here: http://forums.atlasf1.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=69871&perpage=40&display=&pagenumber=2

and look for post 64.

 

"Mike commented on the 29 rolls he inadvertently performed on the first X prize flight. The rolls were caused by a high speed negative alpha departure. Mike slightly overshot the commanded pitch attitude and used a few clicks of nose down trim to compensate - then all hell broke loose. The spacecraft was at Mach 3.5 at the time, and hypersonic flight is not compatible with negative g or alpha. Spaceship One always seems to have some beta - the nose is always wandering around the sky - so the combination of beta and negative alpha was too much. Mike could not control the roll with any aerodynamic surface, but was able to almost null out the gyrations using the compressed air jets once he left the atmosphere. He claims everything would have been OK on reentry because the feathered tail position would seek the relative wind and align the nose in the correct direction.

 

That was the second departure Mike survived in the spacecraft. The first occurred early in the test program while testing an approach to stall. The tail is normally a lifting surface (unlike conventional aircraft where the tail force is usually down), and the tail stalled before the wing, causing an uncontrollable pitch up. Mike rode the craft from 39,000 ft to 20,000 ft until he could regain control. The tail surfaces were enlarged as a result of that discovery. "

 

To get to the point, the original programme decision was political. Its continuation in the face of logic drains resources from science into the launch vehicle itself, and is probably due to programme momentum. These things are hard to stop when they get going.

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Well, thank'ee very much. I thought my brain-dump had killed it. I am a geologist (sedimentologist) and I used to get payed by the CSIRO to describe landscapes and their processes, and to project the models back in time. So apart from the fact I'm interested in space in the same way as mountains and machines, remote sensing can generate stunning data sets. The Landsat data are a wonderful archive, so yes, I am interested. Hyperspectral data give 128 channels and a 3m pixel size! Now where did I put my orgasmatron.......?

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Yes and yes. The foam fell off the tank, so it's not a problem per se, but if the foam hits the shuttle potentially it is. The broken tile is a separate issue. The shuttle always loses tiles on re-entry anyway. Normally this is also not a problem, unless the break is on the leading edge of the wing or similar critical area as happened last time.

 

NASA has now painted itself into a corner because the vehicle they have cannot meet their own safety standards. Without the shuttle the ISS is stuck, incomplete and undermanned. There is no Plan B.

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