Congress proposes increased funding for NASA, including money for Europa lander

[Borgholio]

*Checks the date*

No, it's not April 1st. Congress actually proposed increasing funding to NASA by over a billion dollars for 2016. This includes $175 million specifically allocated to developing a mission to Europa that includes an orbiter AND a lander.

This...doesn't sound like what we have come to expect out of Congress lately.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dr ... -2016.html

After months of delay, Congress unveiled its plans for funding the federal government in 2016. Assuming this legislation passes into law without major modifications, NASA will fare extraordinarily well. The space agency is set to receive $19.3 billion—nearly $1.3 billion more than it did last year. This is the same top-line level we proposed back in October. I called it the "everybody wins" scenario.

So, did everybody win? Almost. Here are some highlights (a full table for comparison is provided below).

Planetary Science

Since 2012, The Planetary Society has been working to reverse the crippling spending cuts proposed, year after year, by the White House. Our goal: restore the budget to at least $1.5 billion per year (the recent historical average) in order to address the top scientific priorities in our solar system. I'm very pleased to report that, in 2016, Congress will provide $1.631 billion for NASA's Planetary Science Division. That's nearly $270 million above the President's request, which would have cut the program from last year (again).

That money allows both the MER Opportunity rover and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to continue science operations (both were zeroed out in the President's budget proposal). It provides $175 million for the new Europa mission and an additional $25 million for “icy satellites surface technology” development. It directs NASA to develop a lander for Europa. The Mars 2020 rover gets an additional $22 million to keep the project on track. The Discovery (small-class) mission line gets a boost, and Plutonium-238 production is fully funded at $15 million.

This is just a fantastic number for the Planetary Science Division. Planetary Society members sent over 120,000 messages to Congress and the White House this year asking for this increase. And after a year of stunning successes by NASA spacecraft at Pluto, Ceres, and Mars, this increase is well earned. To everyone who took the time to write and call: thank you.
Commercial Crew

NASA was pushing this one, hard. It had requested $1.243 billion to keep both Boeing's CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon V2 on track for 2017. From the NASA Administrator to astronauts on the space station, the message was consistent: we need this amount to stay on track. They got it. $1.243 billion for Commercial Crew in 2016.

The Space Launch System (SLS)

Here's what a real congressional priority looks like. The President requested $1.36 billion. Congress will spend $2 billion. That's a $640 million increase above the request for what will be NASA's most powerful rocket since the Saturn V. The SLS was also baselined as the launch vehicle for the future Europa mission.
Earth Science

The Earth Science Division at NASA is funded at $1.921 billion. That's less than the President's request, though it still represents a $149 million increase over last year's budget.

Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD)

This perennially underfunded mission directorate stands to receive $686 million. That’s $39 million shy of the President’s request, though it represents a $90 million increase over last year’s amount. However, an earmark directs $133 million of the STMD’s budget to be spent on the RESTORE-L satellite servicing project, a program moved over from the International Space Station budget line that will more than consume the increase to STMD this year.

This bill is referred to as “omnibus” because it mushes together what would have been twelve separate pieces of legislation into a single, 2,000 page epic. Essentially every part of the government that is not Social Security or health care is funded by this omnibus bill. And if this bill can't get signed into law, the federal government has no money to spend, and the government shuts down. Hence this bill is considered a “must-pass” piece of legislation.

Knowing this, members of Congress attach unrelated policy statements in the bill that, while divisive, are not bad enough to sink the passage of the entire bill. Knowing how many policy riders you can get away with is a fine line to walk, and it was one reasons this bill was in negotiations for so long. Do not be surprised if you read about these policy riders in the next few days. It's one of the reasons why omnibus legislation is generally a bad idea.

However, the fact that this bill being released to the public and being readied for a vote means that the Congressional leadership believes they have the votes necessary to pass the thing. That's no guarantee, but better chances than not. The White House has indicated that it will sign the bill as it currently stands.

The vote is not yet scheduled, but it is likely to occur on Thursday or Friday of this week.

[Iroscato]

....

Meanwhile, Satan enjoys his first snowball fight.

Seriously, this is splendid news if all goes well

[LaCroix]

So you get a partial budget that incudes NASA as a shiny bit of string to distract, but doesn't fund Healthcare and Social Security.
Which means this can now be delayed until kingdom comes, while the shutdown is off the table.

This already has a bad vibe. Now we wait to find out what earmarks were tagged on this little piggy...

[Guardsman Bass]

Culberson's been pretty great on boosting the Europa mission, getting it up into the billion-dollar-plus flagship mission range with new funding. He's been doing it, too, in spite of Bolden's perpetual reluctance to actually fund any sort of new flagship robotic mission (seriously, Bolden's NASA briefly tried to cut the funding for Mars 2020 lander a few years back).

[Borgholio]

So you get a partial budget that incudes NASA as a shiny bit of string to distract, but doesn't fund Healthcare and Social Security.
Which means this can now be delayed until kingdom comes, while the shutdown is off the table.

This already has a bad vibe. Now we wait to find out what earmarks were tagged on this little piggy...

This is one of those "better than nothing" deals. At least thing is likely to pass and not result in a government shutdown which is the immediate concern. Wrangling over Social Security and Healthcare can come later.

[LaCroix]

This is one of those "better than nothing" deals. At least thing is likely to pass and not result in a government shutdown which is the immediate concern. Wrangling over Social Security and Healthcare can come later.

Nothing is pretty much exactly what I expect the funding for Social Security and Healthcare will amount to once the possibility of a government shutdown is off the table. The Retard side of politics will simply refuse until the funding runs out, and then gracefully offer to fund a few token programs they don't object too much about. And with no way to put pressure upon them, the Doofus side will most likely accept huge cuts.

So while I really like the fact that NASA might get funded properly (at least until the next budget round), I fear the price your country will have to pay for it.

[Borgholio]

So while I really like the fact that NASA might get funded properly (at least until the next budget round), I fear the price your country will have to pay for it.

We'll be suffering with this kind of bullshit long after this round of funding is passed. I'm just taking the cute, happy, fuzzy, purring little piece of good funding news and cradling it in the corner of the room, talking to it softly and petting it while I rock back and forth pretending the house isn't burning down around us.

So, business as usual.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with this; http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 50046.html

Asteroid mining made legal after Barack Obama gives US citizens the right to own parts of celestial bodies

The move marks a major change in space law, which has treated space as something that belongs to everyone on Earth

Private companies can now mine asteroids, after Barack Obama signed a major law that reverses decades of space law.

US citizens are now able to obtain their own asteroids and mine resources out of them, and will be able to own the materials they find there. Until now, space has largely been treated as publicly-owned, meaning that nobody could claim commercial ownership of anything that was out there.

The US government has now thrown out that understanding so that it can get rid of “unnecessary regulations” and make it easier for private American companies to explore space resources commercially. While people won’t actually be able to claim the rock or “celestial body” itself, they will be able to keep everything that they mine out of it.

It is hoped that the new rules will allow people to harvest the often vast amounts of expensive resources that are inside of the asteroids that fly near our planet. In July, a rock with a platinum core passed that was worth £3.5 trillion passed by Earth.

The new law is called the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. As well as giving the right to mine asteroids, it extends America’s commitment to the International Space Station and makes it easier for to run a private space startup company.

It also requires that US authorities specify the way that asteroid mining will be regulated and organised.

Planetary Resources, an American company that intends to make money by mining asteroids, said that the new law was the “single greatest recognition of property rights in history”, and that it “establishes the same supportive framework that created the great economies of history, and will encourage the sustained development of space”.

Much of the ownership of space is regulated by the “Outer Space Treaty”, a document that was signed by the US and Russia among other countries in the 1960s. As well as saying that the moon and other celestial objects are part of the “common heritage of mankind”, it says that exploration must be peaceful and bans countries from putting weapons on the moon and other celestial bodies.

[Isolder74]

....

Meanwhile, Satan enjoys his first snowball fight.

Seriously, this is splendid news if all goes well

Well not yet, the Cubs have yet to win a world series.


On a serious note, I hope that this does mean a mission to Europa in the near future.

[Simon_Jester]

So you get a partial budget that incudes NASA as a shiny bit of string to distract, but doesn't fund Healthcare and Social Security.
Which means this can now be delayed until kingdom comes, while the shutdown is off the table.

This already has a bad vibe. Now we wait to find out what earmarks were tagged on this little piggy...

The number of people who will be effectually be distracted by NASA is negligible. alas. We're a bunch of science fiction nerds so it's a big deal for us, but for most people it's not on the radar, which is why NASA is so underfunded in the first place.

A bigger question is whether it's going to fund the National Park Service, because one of the first casualties of any government shutdown is that all the national parks close, and millions of Americans immediately start screaming because it interferes with their vacation plans.

[Borgholio]

As I understood it, the Park Service is being fully funded this year.

[dragon]

Well a NASA Chief Scientist was claiming that they would find evidence of life soon. Maybe there's more than to it than there letting on.

Humanity is on the verge of discovering alien life, high-ranking NASA scientists say.

"I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years," NASA chief scientist Ellen Stofan said Tuesday (April 7) during a panel discussion that focused on the space agency's efforts to search for habitable worlds and alien life.

"We know where to look. We know how to look," Stofan added during the event, which was webcast live. "In most cases we have the technology, and we're on a path to implementing it. And so I think we're definitely on the road."Former astronaut John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, shared Stofan's optimism, predicting that signs of life will be found relatively soon both in our own solar system and beyond.

"I think we're one generation away in our solar system, whether it's on an icy moon or on Mars, and one generation [away] on a planet around a nearby star," Grunsfeld said during Tuesday's event.
Many habitable environments

Recent discoveries suggest that the solar system and broader Milky Way galaxy teem with environments that could support life as we know it, Grunsfeld said.

For example, oceans of liquid water slosh beneath the icy shells of the Jupiter moons Europa and Ganymede, as well as that of the Saturn satellite Enceladus. Oceans covered much of Mars in the ancient past, and seasonal dark streaks observed on the Red Planet's surface today may be caused by salty flowing water.

Further, NASA's Curiosity rover has found carbon-containing organic molecules and "fixed" nitrogen, basic ingredients necessary for Earth-like life, on the Martian surface.

Farther afield, observations by NASA's Kepler space telescope suggest that nearly every star in the sky hosts planets — and many of these worlds may be habitable. Indeed, Kepler's work has shown that rocky worlds like Earth and Mars are probably more common throughout the galaxy than gas giants such as Saturn and Jupiter.

And just as the solar system is awash in water, so is the greater galaxy, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division.

The Milky Way is "a soggy place," Hertz said during Tuesday's event. "We can see water in the interstellar clouds from which planetary systems and stellar systems form. We can see water in the disks of debris that are going to become planetary systems around other stars, and we can even see comets being dissipated in other solar systems as [their] star evaporates them." [6 Most Likely Places for Alien Life in the Solar System]

Looking for life

Hunting for evidence of alien life is a much trickier proposition than identifying potentially habitable environments. But researchers are working steadily toward that more involved and ambitious goal, Stofan and others said.

For example, the agency's next Mars rover, scheduled to launch in 2020, will search for signs of past life and cache samples for a possible return to Earth for analysis. NASA also aims to land astronauts on Mars in the 2030s — a step Stofan regards as key to the search for Mars life.

"I'm a field geologist; I go out and break open rocks and look for fossils," Stofan said. "Those are hard to find. So I have a bias that it's eventually going to take humans on the surface of Mars — field geologists, astrobiologists, chemists — actually out there looking for that good evidence of life that we can bring back to Earth for all the scientists to argue about."

NASA is also planning out a mission to Europa, which may launch as early as 2022. The main goal of this $2.1 billion mission will be to shed light on the icy moon's potential habitability, but it could also search for signs of alien life: Agency officials are considering ways to sample and study the plumes of water vapor that apparently erupt from Europa's south polar region.

In the exoplanet realm, the agency's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), an $8.8 billion instrument scheduled to launch in 2018, will scope out the atmospheres of nearby "super-Earth" alien planets, looking for gases that may have been produced by life.

JWST will scan the starlight that passes through the air of super-Earths, which are more massive than our own planet but significantly less so than gaseous worlds such as Uranus and Neptune. This method, called transit spectroscopy, will likely not work for potentially habitable Earth-size worlds, Hertz said.

Searching for biosignature gases on small, rocky exoplanets will instead probably require direct imaging of these worlds, using a "coronagraph" to block out the overwhelming glare of their parent stars, Hertz added.

NASA's potential Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, which may launch in the mid-2020s if given the official go-ahead, would include a coronagraph for exoplanet observations.

link

[Flagg]

So, fuck my Social Security Disability COLA, my mothers Social Security Disability and her Military Retirement Disability COLA, we need to give NASA, currently the biggest joke in manned American space exploration since Sputnik, about what it cost to launch 3-4 Space Shittles (not a typo) give or take a guaranteed scrubbed launch or 10? No thanks. How about we merge the manned Spaceflight NASA is planning (but not doing) with whatever the USAF can admit to, and let the rest of that laughable organization send more battlebots to Mars, since they aren't doing anything useful?

I'd give NASA some slack if they had 86'd the utter ridiculous failure that was the Space Shuttle when given the perfect opportunity after the Challenger blew chunks of Christa McAuliffe up and down the Space Coast. But instead, they kept drinking their own failure-Kool-Aid, wasted trillions of dollars more on a "reusable" orbiter that had to essentially be rebuilt after every fucking mission, and got bits of barbequed Astronaut dropped from west Texas to Loseranna.

[TimothyC]

So, fuck my Social Security Disability COLA, my mothers Social Security Disability and her Military Retirement Disability COLA, we need to give NASA, currently the biggest joke in manned American space exploration since Sputnik, about what it cost to launch 3-4 Space Shittles (not a typo) give or take a guaranteed scrubbed launch or 10?

Calm down there skippy.

Social Security isn't funded out of the discretionary budget. The law mandates that it be paid out without the discretion of congress. This omnibus bill that passed was the non-DoD part of the budget. It also waves the debt limit through 2017, so no debt limit triggered shutdown stopping you from getting benefits.

As a side note, the funding increase over requested allows for full funding of the commercial crew program, providing redundant US crew access (Dragon-Falcon 9 & Spaceliner-Atlas V) to the ISS by 2017, while also not cutting into the Orion crew capsule or SLS budgets. The Europa Mission is actually the best thing for the SLS program as it provides a mission for the vehicle.

I'd give NASA some slack if they had 86'd the utter ridiculous failure that was the Space Shuttle when given the perfect opportunity after the Challenger blew chunks of Christa McAuliffe up and down the Space Coast. But instead, they kept drinking their own failure-Kool-Aid, wasted trillions of dollars more on a "reusable" orbiter that had to essentially be rebuilt after every fucking mission, and got bits of barbequed Astronaut dropped from west Texas to Loseranna.

About $200B over the life of the program (in 2011 USD).

[TimothyC]

Ghetto edit:



You know what a Trillion dollar shuttle program would look like?
Flyback boosters (no ETs being expended, or SRBs to be fished out of the water), Titanium airframes allowing increased safety, improvements in redundancy further improving safety and flight rates. Probably a dozen orbiters dramatically cutting the cost of space access.

To go further, in 1986, even if there had been the political will to get rid of the shuttle (and at the time one failure on launch out of 25 was a good safety rate), there were a large number of payloads (not less than six of the 15 flights manifested for 1986) that simply couldn't go up on any other rocket. It took a relative crash program to get the Titan IV into service to provide backup for DoD flights.

PS. Your name is (if I remember this) Proxmire.

[Adam Reynolds]

I'd give NASA some slack if they had 86'd the utter ridiculous failure that was the Space Shuttle when given the perfect opportunity after the Challenger blew chunks of Christa McAuliffe up and down the Space Coast. But instead, they kept drinking their own failure-Kool-Aid, wasted trillions of dollars more on a "reusable" orbiter that had to essentially be rebuilt after every fucking mission, and got bits of barbequed Astronaut dropped from west Texas to Loseranna.

The space shuttle was indeed a terrible design when it came down to it. But NASA had no choice but to lie about its capabilities in order to fund it. They even convinced Reagan that it had the capability to steal Russian satellites, which while theoretically true, was practically impossible.

Like in many enterprises, it came down to the fact that engineers knew it to be impossible but were forced to go through with it due to political requirements. See this for a general explanation as to why:

[Iroscato]

Flagg, all of those arguments against NASA could be magnified by 100 and then applied to the US' war machine (I'm looking at you, F-35). I wish they'd spent trillions of dollars at any point in NASA's existence...

[Flagg]

Flagg, all of those arguments against NASA could be magnified by 100 and then applied to the US' war machine (I'm looking at you, F-35). I wish they'd spent trillions of dollars at any point in NASA's existence...

I agree, but since this thread isn't about the Military Industrial Complex, I don't see how it's relevant.

Though I admit I got my figures wrong on the cost of the great Space Boondoggle that has killed more men and women on their journey to and from space than any other vehicle, everything else still stands.

And while I believe it's true that Congress cannot increase the rate of COLA adjustments, I believe they are the ones who decide (with the Presidents signature or veto) if there will be a cost of living adjustment each year. Just like they cannot give the current session of congress a salary increase (to prevent corruption ), they are the ones who decide if future sessions of Congress will get a raise knowing full well that the vast majority of them will be reelected to receive that pay raise.

[dragon]

So, fuck my Social Security Disability COLA, my mothers Social Security Disability and her Military Retirement Disability COLA, we need to give NASA, currently the biggest joke in manned American space exploration since Sputnik, about what it cost to launch 3-4 Space Shittles (not a typo) give or take a guaranteed scrubbed launch or 10? No thanks. How about we merge the manned Spaceflight NASA is planning (but not doing) with whatever the USAF can admit to, and let the rest of that laughable organization send more battlebots to Mars, since they aren't doing anything useful?

I'd give NASA some slack if they had 86'd the utter ridiculous failure that was the Space Shuttle when given the perfect opportunity after the Challenger blew chunks of Christa McAuliffe up and down the Space Coast. But instead, they kept drinking their own failure-Kool-Aid, wasted trillions of dollars more on a "reusable" orbiter that had to essentially be rebuilt after every fucking mission, and got bits of barbequed Astronaut dropped from west Texas to Loseranna.

Before you start making snide comments about NASA maybe you should look into their spinoff program. Over 1600 technologies they've developed and gave it away. link
Not only did it give companies that got the goods lots of money but it also allowed them to develop addition technology related to the original.

It highlights the inventions, discoveries and economic return on investment resulting from NASA. For every dollar invested by the government the American economy and other countries economies have seen $7 to $14 in new revenue, all from spinoffs and licensing arrangements. That amounts to in $17.6 billion current NASA dollars spent to an economic boost worth as much as $246.4 billion annually.

From the Black & Decker cordless vacuum, the Dustbuster, to ear thermometers and memory foam, we clean, check our temperature and get a good night sleep, here on Earth, on NASA-licensed spinoff technologies.

The winglet found on the wingtips of commercial aircraft today, an invention to reduce drag and improve fuel efficiency, came from NASA. Orthodontists use a translucent material called TPA for invisible braces – invented at NASA for an entirely different purpose. Farmers are using field sensors that tell them when their crops need watering – invented at NASA.

The list goes on and on.

link

hell even race cars benefit from exhaust management systems, brakes, suits even the floor board using material to cut the heat coming from the engine
Space Shuttle Thermal Protection System (TPS) materials that orbit the globe now circle the race track.

BSR has created special TPS blanket insulation kits for use on autos that take part in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) events, and other race cars through its nationwide catalog distribution system.

link

[Flagg]

snip wank

Yeah, that's nice, and great, and all the other shit. But fucking over seniors, retired military, and the disabled and giving a few extra pennies that could be better used elsewhere to an organization that is such a ghost of its former self it pays Vladimir Putin (the guy who invaded and annexed part of a sovereign nation because he could, and wanted to flex is photo-shopped pecs while loading a plastic artillery shell (I don't think that's true, but you can't deny it would totally fit the profile of that nutsack), as opposed to pretend-landing a jet he was a passenger in on an aircraft carrier that had been at sea for 6 months and was almost home when he made them turn around to get as far away from land as possible for a photo-op telling a lie, but more importantly, to show his fake bulge to Americans who cheered while the rest of the world laughed their asses off, but I digress...) to send our Astronauts up to the ISS using obsolete rockets and Soyuz capsules rather than having our own rockets and ships that could fulfill their primary mission of putting humans into space.

But while I am taking a shit on NASA (almost entirely for the Space Shuttle's 20+ years of suckage) my beef has far more to do with a Congress saying they don't have enough money to give COLA's to people who went without them or with a pittance of one for years due to the Bush economic crash, only to flush $1.3 billion down the NASA probe drain. Maybe we'll get more pictures of a giant named comet like Pluto in 20 years!

[jwl]

I don't see why you are going on about manned stuff when unmanned stuff is far more important. Also, can you let all of that anti-russain stuff drop, just for the sake of science?

Although about spinoffs meaning NASA funding should be higher priority than military funding: this is a bit one sided without acknowledging that military research has spinoffs too. You could even argue that NASA itself is to some degree a military spinoff. True, it does it on a much higher budget than NASA ever gets given, but you should at least acknowledge that military spending produces spinoffs and show how NASA is a better value for money on that regard.

[Flagg]

I don't see why you are going on about manned stuff when unmanned stuff is far more important.

Is it?
Can unmanned stuff set up a fully manned Lunar and eventually Martian colony that will eventually be self-sufficient and allow for the human race to survive should some catastrophe render Earth at best uninhabitable for generations and at worse sterilized? Unmanned shit is basically "doing what we can with an utter shit budget that a pittance of $1.3 billion will do nothing to help" in lieu of manned missions where we tend to learn a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot quicker, because if Allen the Astronaut is on Mars and see's a funny looking rock he can walk over, put it in his bag of other funny looking rocks, take them right back to the lab in one or more habitation modules and do a bunch of tests in the matter of a few days or hours and send the results he and his team feel are the most valuable and relevant right back to Earth.

You know, as opposed to one of the skateboards and dune-buggies covered in solar panels and with limited power supplies, where an entire team has to decide if it's worth spending valuable, finite time on a funny looking rock that will take months to examine, drill into, get a fraction of information that an actual manned lab could get, and send those results to Earth about a year later.

You tell me why "unmanned" is "far more important" than sending human beings now. Unless you've drunken so much of the NASA diarrhea in a Dixie Cup that you still think hours to days in a human controlled lab vs months to years a robot with a 20-minute+ delay with some instruments that detect basic information that eventually gets back to Earth for rudimentary study, is inferior.

Also, can you let all of that anti-russain stuff drop, just for the sake of science?

No.

I mean being total hypocrites "for the sake of science" has long been an American tradition, this is true. War criminal Werner Von Braun is a prime example. I mean while we were patting ourselves on the back for hanging Nazi's we let all of that "anti-Japanese doing things equally monstrous when it came to human experimentation" stuff drop, just for the sake of science.

I mean I wonder how much of what we pay per seat for a Soyuz ride goes towards the Russian military currently holding down the fort in annexed chunks of neighboring countries. It may be fine to you to actively give money to pretend-democratic Russia with totally not-a-dictator "Vlad The Im-Pec-able who kills full grown man-eating tigers with his bare hands" in charge, while at the same time condemning their actions as "threats to world peace!!!"

You know, if we had dropped the Space Shittle program like the hot piece of feces that it was at first opportunity, we would without question have some kind of rocket and orbiter system (that would almost certainly put Russia to shame) and we would need to pretend that "science" and "military" budgets exist in their own little walled off universes and never the twain shall meet. And if you believe that, then sorry, but I can't help you.

[jwl]

I don't see why you are going on about manned stuff when unmanned stuff is far more important.

Is it?
Can unmanned stuff set up a fully manned Lunar and eventually Martian colony that will eventually be self-sufficient and allow for the human race to survive should some catastrophe render Earth at best uninhabitable for generations and at worse sterilized? Unmanned shit is basically "doing what we can with an utter shit budget that a pittance of $1.3 billion will do nothing to help" in lieu of manned missions where we tend to learn a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot quicker, because if Allen the Astronaut is on Mars and see's a funny looking rock he can walk over, put it in his bag of other funny looking rocks, take them right back to the lab in one or more habitation modules and do a bunch of tests in the matter of a few days or hours and send the results he and his team feel are the most valuable and relevant right back to Earth.

You know, as opposed to one of the skateboards and dune-buggies covered in solar panels and with limited power supplies, where an entire team has to decide if it's worth spending valuable, finite time on a funny looking rock that will take months to examine, drill into, get a fraction of information that an actual manned lab could get, and send those results to Earth about a year later.

You tell me why "unmanned" is "far more important" than sending human beings now. Unless you've drunken so much of the NASA diarrhea in a Dixie Cup that you still think hours to days in a human controlled lab vs months to years a robot with a 20-minute+ delay with some instruments that detect basic information that eventually gets back to Earth for rudimentary study, is inferior.

Also, can you let all of that anti-russain stuff drop, just for the sake of science?

No.

I mean being total hypocrites "for the sake of science" has long been an American tradition, this is true. War criminal Werner Von Braun is a prime example. I mean while we were patting ourselves on the back for hanging Nazi's we let all of that "anti-Japanese doing things equally monstrous when it came to human experimentation" stuff drop, just for the sake of science.

I mean I wonder how much of what we pay per seat for a Soyuz ride goes towards the Russian military currently holding down the fort in annexed chunks of neighboring countries. It may be fine to you to actively give money to pretend-democratic Russia with totally not-a-dictator "Vlad The Im-Pec-able who kills full grown man-eating tigers with his bare hands" in charge, while at the same time condemning their actions as "threats to world peace!!!"

You know, if we had dropped the Space Shittle program like the hot piece of feces that it was at first opportunity, we would without question have some kind of rocket and orbiter system (that would almost certainly put Russia to shame) and we would need to pretend that "science" and "military" budgets exist in their own little walled off universes and never the twain shall meet. And if you believe that, then sorry, but I can't help you.

Please elaborate what situations you are thinking about which would make earth significantly less inhabitable than, say, Mars. A nuclear winter won't cut it, since it's just as hard to grow crops on Mars as on Earth during a nuclear winter. A severe depletion of the ozone layer won't cut it either, since Mars doesn't have an ozone layer in the first place. In the case of a deadly virus, what you need is an isolated community, which could be via necessity like on Mars, but you could also build an isolated community by choice on earth, and it would be much cheaper.

But really, are manned missions more scientifically important than space telescopes or probes to the outer solar system? Of course they're not. I'd like to hear how the Apollo missions or the next manned Mars missions are going to be more important than the Hubble space telescope (which admittedly needed manned maintance but is primarily an unmanned mission) and the Voyager probes.

[Flagg]

I don't see why you are going on about manned stuff when unmanned stuff is far more important.

Is it?
Can unmanned stuff set up a fully manned Lunar and eventually Martian colony that will eventually be self-sufficient and allow for the human race to survive should some catastrophe render Earth at best uninhabitable for generations and at worse sterilized? Unmanned shit is basically "doing what we can with an utter shit budget that a pittance of $1.3 billion will do nothing to help" in lieu of manned missions where we tend to learn a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot quicker, because if Allen the Astronaut is on Mars and see's a funny looking rock he can walk over, put it in his bag of other funny looking rocks, take them right back to the lab in one or more habitation modules and do a bunch of tests in the matter of a few days or hours and send the results he and his team feel are the most valuable and relevant right back to Earth.

You know, as opposed to one of the skateboards and dune-buggies covered in solar panels and with limited power supplies, where an entire team has to decide if it's worth spending valuable, finite time on a funny looking rock that will take months to examine, drill into, get a fraction of information that an actual manned lab could get, and send those results to Earth about a year later.

You tell me why "unmanned" is "far more important" than sending human beings now. Unless you've drunken so much of the NASA diarrhea in a Dixie Cup that you still think hours to days in a human controlled lab vs months to years a robot with a 20-minute+ delay with some instruments that detect basic information that eventually gets back to Earth for rudimentary study, is inferior.

Also, can you let all of that anti-russain stuff drop, just for the sake of science?

No.

I mean being total hypocrites "for the sake of science" has long been an American tradition, this is true. War criminal Werner Von Braun is a prime example. I mean while we were patting ourselves on the back for hanging Nazi's we let all of that "anti-Japanese doing things equally monstrous when it came to human experimentation" stuff drop, just for the sake of science.

I mean I wonder how much of what we pay per seat for a Soyuz ride goes towards the Russian military currently holding down the fort in annexed chunks of neighboring countries. It may be fine to you to actively give money to pretend-democratic Russia with totally not-a-dictator "Vlad The Im-Pec-able who kills full grown man-eating tigers with his bare hands" in charge, while at the same time condemning their actions as "threats to world peace!!!"

You know, if we had dropped the Space Shittle program like the hot piece of feces that it was at first opportunity, we would without question have some kind of rocket and orbiter system (that would almost certainly put Russia to shame) and we would need to pretend that "science" and "military" budgets exist in their own little walled off universes and never the twain shall meet. And if you believe that, then sorry, but I can't help you.

Please elaborate what situations you are thinking about which would make earth significantly less inhabitable than, say, Mars. A nuclear winter won't cut it, since it's just as hard to grow crops on Mars as on Earth during a nuclear winter. A severe depletion of the ozone layer won't cut it either, since Mars doesn't have an ozone layer in the first place. In the case of a deadly virus, what you need is an isolated community, which could be via necessity like on Mars, but you could also build an isolated community by choice on earth, and it would be much cheaper.

But really, are manned missions more scientifically important than space telescopes or probes to the outer solar system? Of course they're not. I'd like to hear how the Apollo missions or the next manned Mars missions are going to be more important than the Hubble space telescope (which admittedly needed manned maintance but is primarily an unmanned mission) and the Voyager probes.

Asteroid Strike? Comet Strike? Gamma Ray Burst?
And are you being a dishonest twat, or are you so fucking stupid that you don't realize that well populated, constantly expanding underground Lunar Colonies (above ground for longer than you need to tunnel to set up an inhabitable underground base is just stupid, as the best protection against lethal radiation, solar activity, and micro(and not so micro)-meteors is the rock the moon is made of) with artificial life support and a self-sufficient food supply would easily be able to allow for the survival, and eventual resurgence, of the human race? The same goes for a Martian colony (most of which should also be underground for many of the same reasons) only more so because Mars can be terraformed much more easily than the Moon (if you can/would want to bother with terraforming the moon in the first place). And that's just one, extreme example of why you'd want as many self-sufficient human colonies in the Solar system as possible.

And if you think we didn't learn much from Apollo, then you had the shittiest science teacher (though I think you stayed home huffing paint, as you clearly have no understanding of what we're talking about here) ever, and the crazy bitch who taught 10th grade science at Palm Bay High in 1997/1998 needs to mail them her trophy. We pretty much know how the moon was formed thanks to the manned missions to the moon.

[jwl]

Is it?
Can unmanned stuff set up a fully manned Lunar and eventually Martian colony that will eventually be self-sufficient and allow for the human race to survive should some catastrophe render Earth at best uninhabitable for generations and at worse sterilized? Unmanned shit is basically "doing what we can with an utter shit budget that a pittance of $1.3 billion will do nothing to help" in lieu of manned missions where we tend to learn a hell of a lot more, a hell of a lot quicker, because if Allen the Astronaut is on Mars and see's a funny looking rock he can walk over, put it in his bag of other funny looking rocks, take them right back to the lab in one or more habitation modules and do a bunch of tests in the matter of a few days or hours and send the results he and his team feel are the most valuable and relevant right back to Earth.

You know, as opposed to one of the skateboards and dune-buggies covered in solar panels and with limited power supplies, where an entire team has to decide if it's worth spending valuable, finite time on a funny looking rock that will take months to examine, drill into, get a fraction of information that an actual manned lab could get, and send those results to Earth about a year later.

You tell me why "unmanned" is "far more important" than sending human beings now. Unless you've drunken so much of the NASA diarrhea in a Dixie Cup that you still think hours to days in a human controlled lab vs months to years a robot with a 20-minute+ delay with some instruments that detect basic information that eventually gets back to Earth for rudimentary study, is inferior.



No.

I mean being total hypocrites "for the sake of science" has long been an American tradition, this is true. War criminal Werner Von Braun is a prime example. I mean while we were patting ourselves on the back for hanging Nazi's we let all of that "anti-Japanese doing things equally monstrous when it came to human experimentation" stuff drop, just for the sake of science.

I mean I wonder how much of what we pay per seat for a Soyuz ride goes towards the Russian military currently holding down the fort in annexed chunks of neighboring countries. It may be fine to you to actively give money to pretend-democratic Russia with totally not-a-dictator "Vlad The Im-Pec-able who kills full grown man-eating tigers with his bare hands" in charge, while at the same time condemning their actions as "threats to world peace!!!"

You know, if we had dropped the Space Shittle program like the hot piece of feces that it was at first opportunity, we would without question have some kind of rocket and orbiter system (that would almost certainly put Russia to shame) and we would need to pretend that "science" and "military" budgets exist in their own little walled off universes and never the twain shall meet. And if you believe that, then sorry, but I can't help you.

Please elaborate what situations you are thinking about which would make earth significantly less inhabitable than, say, Mars. A nuclear winter won't cut it, since it's just as hard to grow crops on Mars as on Earth during a nuclear winter. A severe depletion of the ozone layer won't cut it either, since Mars doesn't have an ozone layer in the first place. In the case of a deadly virus, what you need is an isolated community, which could be via necessity like on Mars, but you could also build an isolated community by choice on earth, and it would be much cheaper.

But really, are manned missions more scientifically important than space telescopes or probes to the outer solar system? Of course they're not. I'd like to hear how the Apollo missions or the next manned Mars missions are going to be more important than the Hubble space telescope (which admittedly needed manned maintance but is primarily an unmanned mission) and the Voyager probes.

Asteroid Strike? Comet Strike? Gamma Ray Burst?

Asteroid/Comet strike are covered under "nuclear winter", GRB is covered under "ozone layer" (and furthermore GRBs are not exculsive to any patricular planet in the solar system or even nearby solar systems). Please respond to the relevant parts of my previous post.

And are you being a dishonest twat, or are you so fucking stupid that you don't realize that well populated, constantly expanding underground Lunar Colonies (above ground for longer than you need to tunnel to set up an inhabitable underground base is just stupid, as the best protection against lethal radiation, solar activity, and micro(and not so micro)-meteors is the rock the moon is made of) with artificial life support and a self-sufficient food supply would easily be able to allow for the survival, and eventual resurgence, of the human race? The same goes for a Martian colony (most of which should also be underground for many of the same reasons) only more so because Mars can be terraformed much more easily than the Moon (if you can/would want to bother with terraforming the moon in the first place). And that's just one, extreme example of why you'd want as many self-sufficient human colonies in the Solar system as possible.

Indeed. And the same goes for a similar set-up on earth, going to another planet is unnecessary.

And if you think we didn't learn much from Apollo, then you had the shittiest science teacher (though I think you stayed home huffing paint, as you clearly have no understanding of what we're talking about here) ever, and the crazy bitch who taught 10th grade science at Palm Bay High in 1997/1998 needs to mail them her trophy. We pretty much know how the moon was formed thanks to the manned missions to the moon.

Indeed, the seismometer readings on the Apollo missions were rather useful in working out the moon's origins, as were the collected moonrocks. Not that they couldn't have used rocks taken from unmanned missions, or sent a seismometer up on an unmanned mission.

But the Moon is only one of the many gravitationally rounded moons in the solar system, and the vast majority of what we know about these other moons come from unmanned probes.