1 You were born in 1981!?  Forget NASA; THAT'S DISTURBING!!!!!

2 Alahu ackbar.

3 1981?!  I have shoes older than you.

4 It concluded that "lack of clarity and constancy of purpose among NASA, Congress and the White House Muslim Outreach" may endanger astronauts in the future. It includes a thinly-veiled plea for sanity more funding.

5 What am I forgetting?

Scramjet research (X-51) and the Mars probes/rovers.

In general, though, you're right.  We're not getting very much for our money.

6

Jesus, Gabe. 

1981 -  You're a pup.

7 Tang sucks. Get rid of NASA.

Let DOD fund military space programs.

8 NASA robot probes have done more to expand our knowledge of the Solar System than all the other work done before. That is worthy. We rely on a mixture of public and private transportation here on Earth. Same should be so for the rest of the Solar System.

9 Mars Global Surveyer.
Galileo mission to Jupiter
Cassini mission to Saturn

NASA has been doing a hell of a lot of good work with unmanned robotic probes. It's the program for manned flight which has been sucking the life -- and money -- out of the organization. As computers and electronics get smaller and better, it makes less and less sense to send humans into space.

10 1981? Get Off My Lawn

11

 Tell me about some worthy NASA projects in my lifetime. I'm thinking Hubble was worth the effort, given how much we've learned about the universe from it. GPS is a DOD project, so that doesn't count. What am I forgetting?

Here ya' go.

A list of Probes for you...

12

The space station, although I'm really not sure what it does.

and jeebus gabe, get the hell off my lawn!

13

"And how come I can't get no Tang anymore?"

"Shut up!"

14 Interesting website of NASA spinoffs:

http://tinyurl.com/b6va8

15 NASA needs to put a bulldozer and a drilling rig on Mars. Enough with this skritching the surface shit.

16 I'm not first, Gabe, but am old enough to remember when NASA was a source of great national pride, because it put us into space and, ultimately, on the Moon.

Because of  those memories, I support continuing NASA, with the proviso that its mission be the one originally laid out, minus any Mooslim outreach or other politically correct bullshit.

It's inevitable (IMO) that we will have to find new habitable worlds eventually and, even though it won't happen in my lifetime, you have to start somewhere....

17 How can you say that, Gabe?

Islam is the glue that holds our Shuttle tiles on. (Unless the Shuttle is carrying a Jew and some painted Hindu slut then it's okay for the glue not to work.)

18

Gabe, a better question would be, What has the manned space program done since you were born?

Almost ALL ( except Hubble and rescue Hubble and refit/repair Hubble) of the manned space missions have been very exspensive experiment platforms or building the space station, which is a dubious money waster (IMO).

The cool stuff that NASA does involves the test-bed aircraft, the scram-jet stuff, and the probe stuff.

The Shuttle program has been a money-hole since inception and sadly has cost 14 astronauts their lives.

19 What about Muslim outreach?

20 The ancient Muslim base on the Lunar far side still puzzles NASA scientists.

21 Jeebus, Gabe.  My grandpa was working at the Cape when the first moon landing took place.

Now, where's my damned walker?  And get off my fucking lawn.

22 The Shuttle program has been a money-hole since inception and sadly has cost 14 astronauts their lives.

I guess there's an argument that Shuttle program is a kind of PR Department for the real science NASA does.

But I do favor that James Hansen(sp?) be fired for being anti-science.

23 O/T
NY Times doing Mag article on Jared.  Hope Krugman reads it.  Guess what?  Jared is a Truther who hated Bush.  Sound like a right wing guy for sure.

He became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government and that the countryÂ’s central banking system was enslaving its citizens. His anger would well up at the sight of President George W Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.

24

What about Muslim outreach?

There are no reach-a-rounds in Islam!

25 people already mentioned probes... as to the future, I was thinking a large permanent base would be the next major project to be done. Place it at a LaGrange point between the earth and the moon. NEO studies are good as potential sources of minerals and water for future space projects. http://www.newscientist.com/article/ dn17713-why-future-astronauts-may -be-sent-to-gravity-holes.html Oh... and, good grief, I thought I was a youngin.

26

I was just thinking... the Shuttle came along in the 70's... and was marketed as reuseable..   SO..  wasn't NASA back in the day, responding to the early GREEN movement... because the mid 70's is when they started pushing recycling on us and solar power and wind power.

It was a shame to waste those big Saturn V rockets... all that waste!  We must recycle!  Regardless of the cost!

Political, no?

27 NASA needs to fucking go. But it won't.

28 Yeah, I remember back in the old days, when prominent Muslim NASA scientists sent the first goat into space.  Good times.

29

I'd like Nasa's mission to be to go to the moon and create a giant "Bomb Mohammad" visible from Earth.

If the Muslims don't like it, they'll have our permission to tear it down themselves.

30 He became intrigued by antigovernment conspiracy theories, including that the Sept. 11 attacks were perpetrated by the government and that the countryÂ’s central banking system was enslaving its citizens. His anger would well up at the sight of President George W Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.

Posted by: Kemp at January 15, 2011 01:36 PM (JpFM9)

I am sure the Tuscon Truthers (tm nickless) at MSNBC will find that this is not important news and skip over it. 

31 And woah,... we had Democrats in Charge in TOTAL control in Washington... hmmmm.

32

Here ya' go.

A list of Probes for you...

They left a few off that list...

33 The New Horizons probe is still 4.5 years away from Pluto. It is powered by plutonium. I hope somebody fitted a laser on its head. Just in case.

34 1981?  Seriously, Gabe???

The manned-space stuff in the last 30 years has been pretty much a headache.  However, the unmanned orbits and probes have been (quietly) very successful.  They haven't been glamorous or splashy, so we haven't heard a lot about them.

35 His anger would well up at the sight of President George W Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.

Posted by: Kemp at January 15, 2011 01:36 PM (JpFM9)

Oh and I knew the New York Times would find a way to blame it on Bush,

36 I have a useful idea for NASA.  How about creating a base on Mars for practitioners of the Religion of Peace?  Just send them all up there (with their favorite sheep and goats, of course) and let them worship allah to their hearts content. 

37 Sarah Palin made them make the English/Metric mistake that murdered the Mars Polar Explorer.

38 Like... totally. I sooo agree with you, Gabe. NASA is like sooo grody. Gag  me with a spooon!

39 yeah I think it is time to seriously consider privatizing NASA.

it is beyond a parody of its former self.

and besides that: haven't we all forgotten, WE'RE BROKE.  NASA is a luxury we can't afford right now.

40 OMG. I'm older than Gabe. *gasp*

41 And don't forget us! We proved man could survive 400-600°F temperatures near the Great Lakes.

42 OMG. I'm older than Gabe. *gasp* Posted by: chique d'afrique (the artist formerly known as african chick) at January 15, 2011 01:46 PM

Hell, I have food in the refrigerator older than Gabe....

43 "It concluded that lack of clarity and constancy of purpose among (fill in the blank), (second group) and the (choice from third column)." Defund every single government agency for one year and see if any of them are missed. Send every member of Congress home for 5 years and see if it matters. If need be, I would volunteer to step in and do the heavy lifting for all agencies and Congress in the meantime. Maine NAACP, too while I'm at it.

44 All this talk of probes is getting me hot and bothered!

45 Where on God's earth would we be without freeze-dried food? (for the coming zombie apocalypse).

46 Exit question: I was born in 1981.

I can't get past this.  Um, what was Gabe's post about?

47 45 All this talk of probes is getting me hot and bothered!

Posted by: E.T. at January 15, 2011 01:49 PM (QBQcg) 

Me Too!

48 What am I forgetting?

All those Muslim contributions to the mathematical sciences!!!  Duh.

49 Tell me about some worthy NASA projects in my lifetime.

Well...NASA is adept at making grandiose public announcements implying that they've found life on other worlds, while in truth they've really only discovered some form of bacteria that can thrive at higher arsenic concentrations than the norm.

/Remember this fiasco?

50
It'd be nice if NASA packs up all its shit in a Shuttle and goes to Mars and takes the RNC and CPAC with it.

51 It includes a thinly-veiled plea for more funding.

That is really the bottom line. NASA has become yet another corrupted bureaucratic government agency with no benefit to the country. All military applicable stuff should be returned to the military and the rest of the agency refunded and disbanded.

52 I grudgingly admit the usefulness and even occasionally cleverness and efficiency of the probe programs, and they should continue.

The rest of NASA is a government jobs/PR program that needs to go, because they aren't taking the lead, they're just taking up the lead position. i.e. they're sitting in front of everyone else, in the way, and not accomplishing anything useful.

There are probably a few other bits and pieces worth preserving, but "needs new management" would be a huge understatement.

We do need space exploration and exploitation, we're just barely getting the former.

I'm not one of those kooks who thinks that magic technological achievement happens with the "right" people in charge, but I'm pretty sure cutting out about 8 layers of stagnant bureaucracy wouldn't hurt, and it would be less expensive. We do have cheaper shuttle alternatives and have for decades.

The shuttle was never worth it. Oh, sure, it was impressive, but so is the world's largest ball of twine.

The problem with a station at the lagrange point is radiation - it would have to be so heavy that we'd probably have to build it with material from the moon, which means establishing a moonbase first (probably starting with a roboting mining operation) - and NASA just can't do that. Maybe Halliburton can, or GE.

53 If NASA had spent the last 40 years dropping pallets of food, water, air, and other supplies on Mars, a few brave souls could be living a great adventure there right now. They'd die there, on Mars, but they'd die here on Earth too.

54

Way back when we actually made things, NASA's research and development was a great boon to our economy. All kinds of neat-o things came from them, were made into consumer products by companies that paid taxes and employed Americans. Good times. I once worked at Marshall Space Flight Center, and the esprit de corps was so positively charged as to be palpable.

What we have NASA doing now defies description. Mooselim outreach? WTF? If that's all we can do now, I'm all for cutting the agency loose.

It's a sad note to end on. When a nation such as ours loses the will to explore, it proves that we have the wrong people in power. It's not the people who have given up on it, mind you, but the libtards in Washington who want to redistribute wealth instead of create it. That, and the fact that they have no sense of what could be outside of their warped view of a "perfect society." They forget that we are lagging behind other developed nations in our production of engineers and mathematicians. NASA once piqued young peoples' imagination. Today, not so much.

Also, keep in mind that Congress was directly responsible for the Shuttle tragedies by considering the crew expendable in the first two minutes of flight in order to save money.

55 How in the hell am I older than Gabe? Ugh, guess it's time for me to put down the Xbox and pick up the Ensure. But yeah, as long as private corporations are willing to perform science and exploration in space (not tourism) I'm fine with ending NASA. The government can get back into the space race when we figure out how to build the Enterprise. A space armada is a function of national (planetary?) defense.

56 36 His anger would well up at the sight of President George W Bush, or in discussing what he considered to be the nefarious designs of government.

Posted by: Kemp at January 15, 2011 01:36 PM (JpFM9)

Oh and I knew the New York Times would find a way to blame it on Bush,

Posted by: robtr at January 15, 2011 01:42 PM (hVDig)

you know, that was the first take I got out of that too. until I looked at it from a little different angle: Lunatics get bent out of shape at the sight of GWB. Left wingers get bent out of shape at the sight of GWB. ergo...

57

Oh, crap, I didn't change the spelling of occurance before I reposted my comment.  

It's Sarah's fault.

58
yeah, how many billions of dollars are we spending to find out on an annual basis that there might be ice on  Mars and the Moon and Saturn and...?

Woopdadeefuckindoo!

59
who cares

it's time for a football thread

60 The shuttle was never worth it. Oh, sure, it was impressive, but so is the world's largest ball of twine.

Have you actually seen the world's largest ball of twine?  It's actually not all that impressive.  It's a fuckin' ball of string.

61 NASA has no clear purpose. You're as likely to hear about NASA's global warming studies as you are a shuttle launch, salt evaporation projects as interplanetary probes.

Mission creep. NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I bet less than half of what they do is even tangentially related to aeronautics and space.

62 How in the hell am I older than Gabe?

yeah I'm thinking Gabe is definitely below the median age of AoSHQ regulars

63 The problem with trying to fix it is that it is impossible to "reform" a government agency. The only thing you can do is completely kill it and forbid anyone above mid-level management from ever holding a government job again.

64 I'm still trying to figure out how there's a cat in England who's nearly as old as Gabe in cat years, 32 (from the sidebar the other day).

Now, where's that case of Depends I ordered? 

65 who cares

it's time for a football thread

I demand a recipe thread.  _*ducks*

66 Drop or decrease the manned space flights , the rest is good.

67
speaking of stupidity...

what fucking moron would run for another term at the RNC without knowing he already had the election in the bag?

Is Steele that fucking stupid to put his rep on the line and risk being rejected? He looks like a turd. Well done, Michael. You're done, indeed.

He could've walked away, kinda a winner. The GOP just had the best election season since, when, 1946?, and Steele coulda walked off into the sunset taking a some of the credit.

But no. He made the party reject him.

68 New NASA charter: Own the high ground.

69 Also, keep in mind that Congress was directly responsible for the Shuttle tragedies by considering the crew expendable in the first two minutes of flight in order to save money.
I seem to recall that one of the Shuttle disaster's that saw the tiles come off was because the EPA (or similar agency) banned the old glue that had been previously used successfully.

70 President Obama wants an asteroid mission, even as most of the NASA folks talk about skipping the moon and going straight to Mars.

We're not paying for that, roundeyes.

71
football threads *are* damn recipe threads, most of the time

72 I demand a recipe thread.  _*ducks*

Posted by: Jane D'oh at January 15, 2011 02:02 PM (UOM4

I was thinking of asking for one of those earlier....but I was ascared to.  You're brave.

73 Yeah I'm thinking Gabe is definitely below the median age of AoSHQ regulars
I don't know how many of us are regular.

74 I bet less than half of what they do is even tangentially related to aeronautics and space.


But there is a whole lotta administratin' going on!

75 Now, where's that case of Depends I ordered?

Hey, what's this big box of Depends doing here?  And where's my case of commemorative Obama plates?

76 How about a football/fashion thread?

77 It's actually not all that impressive.  It's a fuckin' ball of string.
So you're not a String Theory proponent, chemjeff?

78
my keys_^tm to the game, let me tell you them

79 Yeah, a recipe thread, I could bring some of my favorites

80

Afternoon!

I could go for a recipe thread.

Do we have a quorum?

81 Yeah I'm thinking Gabe is definitely below the median age of AoSHQ regulars
I don't know how many of us are regular.

Posted by: andycanuck at January 15, 2011 02:05 PM

I used to be regular.  Like a clock.  Now I need more fiber.

82 Somebody put up a sports thread so people can stop whining about a sports thread.

That shit's getting irritating, it's showing up in a lot of threads now. Freakin' junkies.

You give in to 'em once, and they show up and scratch at the screen door every day.

83 I would actually participate in a recipe thread, except I can't eat Earth food.

84
This is now the football thread.

You can thank Merovign for the suggestion.

85 You know what we need?
 A chemistry thread.

I'll start it off:
Where does a chemist put the dirty dishes?

in the zinc!

get it?  zinc?  sounds like sink?  man that's hilarious!!!!!!

86 I've long been in favor of shutting down NASA and replacing it with several much smaller, much more specific in mission agencies. Agencies that would rely far more on contracting with the private sector to achieve their goals.

I'm a lifelong fan of space exploration but cannot find a single credible argument why disinterested tax payers should be picking up the tab for pure scientific research with only the most nebulous of potential benefits. Expanding human knowledge is a hard sell to people wondering how they're going to afford to commute to work with $5 a gallon gas.

Launch systems should become entirely the responsibility of the Air Force. Let them move increasingly to high atmosphere and ex-atmosphere jobs while the Navy takes on more low atmosphere aeronautics. Let us focus on things with real useful results for the part of the government that has a real name for access to orbit and beyond. Leave it to the civilian contractor to find spin-offs they can sell to the scientific research community and business.

87

I seem to recall that one of the Shuttle disaster's that saw the tiles come off was because the EPA (or similar agency) banned the old glue that had been previously used successfully.

This is what happens when we have unqualified prog pols dictating the actions of engineers and scientists. Their egos know no boundaries.

I used to work with a guy who'd argue that NASA funding was better spent here on Earth. I thought he was going to explode on me when I told him that that money was spent here.

88 Gabe, you and your cadre of vitriolic right wingers are ratcheting up the hate. Stop or I'll shoot!

89 Mmmm... but like, a Mars colony would be sooo tasty!

>Squeal!< Mars bars for everyone!

90
you ever make nougat?

Nougat is fun word to say.

Nobody even knows what nougat is or where it comes from.

91  Let's face it,  NASA hasn't had a new idea since the last kraut retired. 

92 Nobody even knows what nougat is or where it comes from.

Posted by: lolsoothsayer at January 15, 2011 02:15 PM

Are you sure you want the horrible, horrible truth?

93

Nobody even knows what nougat is or where it comes from.

Doesn't it come from Mars?

94
True or False?
Three Musketeers has nougat.

95 I could go for a recipe thread too

96 I know what nougat is.

97 Way back when we actually made things, NASA's research and development was a great boon to our economy. All kinds of neat-o things came from them,

This is mostly a myth as far as i can tell. If they did create anything new, it was at enormous cost that would have been better spent on more commercial research. There are a couple of exceptions that come to mind, like their work on failure analysis, but even there it was a closed system -- they created an enormous knowledge base, and then wasted it on more space crap. The people they trained were mostly lifers, and the ones that did leave were mostly worthless (I managed enough to know.) so even the innovations were marginally useful to creating wealth.

manned space was great pr in the 60's. after that it was pure waste.

98

Are you sure you want the horrible, horrible truth?

Is it bat guano?

99
Nobody even knows what nougat is or where it comes from.

Posted by: lolsoothsayer at January 15, 2011 02:15 PM (uFokq)

Mark Harmon knows....

http://tinyurl.com/4zskpdk

100 I don't know how many of us are regular.

TMI!

101 This is now the football thread.

You can thank Merovign for the suggestion.

Posted by: lolsoothsayer at January 15, 2011 02:10 PM (uFokq)

Oh, so you've adopted the Democrat playbook now. How's that workin' out for ya?

102
wow I can't believe CBS ripped off my nougat bit

103 '81 was good year. The parts I remember, anyway.

104

Banned? 

The Fuck!

105

Mmm nougat.

 Even more mmmm...Mark Harmon.

106 #56

That is a myth promoted by NASA PR. Virtually nothing in the way of useful products or processes originated from within NASA or at its behest. At best, being connected with the space program allowed obscure items to draw attention to themselves and gain some footing in the market.

DARPA has been far more effective at bringing new things into existence that proves useful in civilian applications, and with far better ROI. DARPA has quietly done far more to create the modern world than NASA could ever dream of achieving. The difference? DARPA projects have concrete goals while NASA can spend a $Billion on something that never gets beyond the PowerPoint stage.

107 Silly, nougat comes from Fluffy. It's a cat product.

108 Coke machines!!  Shoot them to get the change to call the White House !!!

109

Pixxy thought my 'Elemental Dishes For Sale' post was Spam, I guess.

Too bad...that took a while to write out.

110 109 Silly, nougat comes from Fluffy. It's a cat product.

Posted by: dagny at January 15, 2011 02:22 PM (+Z6ve)

Stop divulging trade secrets!  You'll be hearing from my lawyers.

111

Hey I haven't actually watched any news in the the past day. How is the RNC Chair's name pronounced?

I'm just taken to calling him Prius.

112

 Even more mmmm...Mark Harmon.

Posted by: laceyunderalls at January 15, 2011 02:21 PM (x1/q

Boy, you're not kidding...

113 Mark Harmon won the Heisman, bitches !!!!11111!!!!!!!

114 A tow truck would be nice.

115 Hey I haven't actually watched any news in the the past day. How is the RNC Chair's name pronounced?

Darth Voldemort

116 Nobody even knows what nougat is or where it comes from.
Posted by: lolsoothsayer at January 15, 2011 02:15 PM

Dunno what nougat comes from, but it makes me costive.

117 oy, i have a son your age.

118 Ryntz  Pree-buss ---  Dutch name, methinks

119 well almost, but still.

120

Gabriel,

get off my lawn!

121 OT: Found this quiz on the constitution following a link on Insty:
http://tinyurl.com/66yxxf4

"elected officials who took the test scored an average 5 percentage points lower than the national average (49 percent vs. 54 percent), with ordinary citizens outscoring these elected officials on each constitutional question."

(link goes to AOL News)

The quiz is only 10 questions. Seemed pretty easy to me. Try it and see if you're smarted than an elected official.

122 Yeah I'm going with Prius, thanks though.

123 Shit, how could I have forgotten the arsenic-eaters from last December!11!1!!!!111!!!1!!! That's real research, morons.

124 oy, i have a son your age.

Posted by: willow at January 15, 2011 02:26 PM (h+qn

how you  doin'?  

125 No NASA, No More Super Power. Hello Second Class Country.

126

The problem is we HAD to send humans when they're unnecessary. The payloads are so heavy, and too much of the spacecraft is consumed with keeping the humans alive, as well as, the additional fuel required to get that weight into orbit. Initially, it was cool to put a man on the moon. With the advent of advanced computer and electronics, it's no longer important to send an astronaut, and way too expensive.

I know I'll take some incoming regarding this view, but—bring it!

127 re: merovign @ 54 I was thinking perhaps the L1 lagrange, which is apparently within the earth's magnetosphere ~50% of the time. I figure this could be compensated through lead plating or the generation of a electromagnetic field of its own. I was thinking L1 because, while less stable than L4/L5, it has less stuff there and less radiation. also, the reason I mentioned NEO's would be that they would possibly be better mining locations than the moon as takeoff/landing would be far less energy intensive

128

Gabe was born after the movie Alien.

Instead of NASA , let private corporations explore/exploit space.  Like the Weyland-Yutani conglomerate.  I hear LV-426 is lovely this time of year.  Just a few bugs.

129 <i>Exit question: I was born in 1981. Tell me about some worthy NASA projects in my lifetime</i><p>

<B><U>SPACE CAMP</U></B>.  The movie, from 1986.
<p>
Everything in this thread pales in comparison to Space Camp.  Over 100 posts and nobody remembers Space Camp? You all fail!

130 well apparently html no longer works here!

131 I think I am gong to learn to speak Chinese or may be easier to marry a nice chinese gal, just no sure what my present wife would say?

132 SPACE CAMP (1986)

133

That is a myth promoted by NASA PR.

No, it's not. While it's true that DARPA is now doing what NASA once did, NASA has contributed far more than you know to our modern technological database. I have personally worked on quite a few NASA spinoffs.

I'm guessing you're about Gabe's age, aren't you?

134 128

The problem is we HAD to send humans when they're unnecessary. The payloads are so heavy, and too much of the spacecraft is consumed with keeping the humans alive, as well as, the additional fuel required to get that weight into orbit. Initially, it was cool to put a man on the moon. With the advent of advanced computer and electronics, it's no longer important to send an astronaut, and way too expensive.

I agree, and so would Gene Roddenberry.  In fact, he was booed at several lectures he gave because he thought there wouldn't be any manned "Star Treks", that they would be all robotic for the reasons you just described. 

NASA is still stuck in the 60's, trying to replicate the fame they had back back then. 

135 Your either on the cutting edge or the cutting board

136 93 Let's face it, NASA hasn't had a new idea since the last kraut retired.
Posted by: VADM (Red) Cuthbert Collingwood RN at January 15, 2011 02:16 PM (UL/HQ)

Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.

You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun.

137 First of all, the Mars Rovers were mostly a fucking JPL gig.  NASA did not have much to do with it.  Hell NASA could not even launch the fucking things, they had to have the Air Force do it.

I remember as a kid hearing about how the shuttle was the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Later after several physics, and astro classes I realized what a POS of shit it really is.

The last report I read was that it took around 35K people to launch a shuttle.  Think about that.  That is more than a small city.  If they spent their budget on actual flight maybe they might get some shit done.  But they seem to be spending it all on stuff that has nothing to do with actual fucking space flight.

Yeah I don't like NASA much.  Waste of money.

138 NASA is still stuck in the 60's, trying to replicate the fame they had back back then. This- plus all the flat-tops and black-framed glasses and cigarettes. Back before diversity became the mission priority in every governmental program.

139  We had a bumper crop of Nougat last year, this year we rotated to Chamois... getting some genetically modified Sham Wow seeds for next year

140

Awful lot of folks saying manned space travel is a waste.  Not planning on carrying on the human race, eh?  Eventually the sun goes nova and we all die, but hey let's cede everything to skynet and the bots.  Or we can cede space to the Chinese and they can go ahead and gain access to oh, I don't know, strip mining asteroid fields and planets for resources we'll never have access to.

Way to go.  Shortsightedness sucks.  Two best programs in the gov are DoD and NASA.  That being said, take all that global warming touchy feely crap out of NASA and give it to NOAA if you must, without increasing either agencies' allotment.  Should free up some resources for developing manned spaceflight.  So, you know, we can expand.

141 Hubble made pretty photos but how is that valuable? I mean, if they put a line item charge on your tax bill no one would accept the cost.

Further, it diverted talent from the much cheaper terrestrial technologies for getting pretty pictures like arrays and corrective optics. Mega waste.

142 No F-22, No Missile defense system, no new boomers, no NASA, Less Active Duty Marines and Army, but hey we got rid of DADT!

143 I'm very pleased to have been born before 1981. You young fuckers are so fucked. The end of your lives promises to be very exciting.

144 Maybe Malor created this post to confuse us as to the reality that NASA is actually spending it's resources on time travel, and that Malor isn't really from 1981?

145 I can see a use for NASA in looking for objects hurtling towards the face of the Earth (insert raunchy joke here).  That is a real danger to the planet.

But all of this trumped up and unscientific pontificating about AGW and the whole Muslim outreach bullshittery makes me think the best way to accomplish this is to shut down NASA and give the job to a new Space Defense Agency responsible for our anti-missile, anti-satellite and anti-asteroid operations.  It is obvious all of these things are needed.  I would add anti-alien to the list but that might lead someone to shoot a Mexican.  Damn Teabaggers take everything so literally... including that inscrutable and obscure parchment called The Constitution.  You just can't be too careful what you say around them.

146

I agree, and so would Gene Roddenberry. In fact, he was booed at several lectures he gave because he thought there wouldn't be any manned "Star Treks", that they would be all robotic for the reasons you just described.

NASA is still stuck in the 60's, trying to replicate the fame they had back back then.

Thanks, I knew I heard it somewhere.

147 Gabe, a better question would be, What has the manned space program done since you were born?

An even better question would be "what has the manned space program ever done"?  Putting people on the moon (then) or in LEO (now) makes no sense from a practical standpoint and has always been an expensive vanity project.  There's nothing they can do that couldn't be done more cheaply by machines.

148

"There's nothing they can do that couldn't be done more cheaply by machines."

Except, you know, spread people.  Something about eggs, one basket, etc etc...

149

To put the year of Gabe's birth into movie perspective, these were released in 1981:

Stripes

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Mad Max The Road Warrior

The Final Conflict

Quest for Fire

Escape From New York

Eye of the Needle

Friday the 13th Part 2

The Evil Dead

150 Your either on the cutting edge or the cutting board

Posted by: nevergiveup at January 15, 2011 02:33 PM (0GFWk)

this.

151 Except, you know, spread people.  Something about eggs, one basket, etc etc...

Doesn't make sense if you think it through logically.  You could get the same benefit far more cheaply by digging a deep bomb shelter into the earth.  If we have a nuclear war and then the planet gets hit by a giant asteroid your bomb shelter will still be more conducive to continued human existence than anything in space.

The exception would be if we could actually colonize another planet.  But without terraforming there isn't any planet in this solar system that will be better than the bomb shelter, and if we do terraform it doesn't make sense to send people until it's almost done.  Also, it will take centuries.

152 Awful lot of folks saying manned space travel is a waste.  Not planning on carrying on the human race, eh?  Eventually the sun goes nova and we all die, but hey let's cede everything to skynet and the bots.

I'll worry about that when children start locking themselves in closets and writing illogical number sequences on the door.

153

Probes, shmobes -- what are the tangible results from them? Pretty pictures?

In the past I was always a supporter of science for sake of knowledge, AKA "pure science". One only had to look at Bell Labs to see the benefits such research could provide.

But that model doesn't seem to work anymore. Maybe because it was privately funded for profit?

I remember promises that one day soon we would be manufacturing commercially viable ultra-high purity, ultra perfect materials in space. Those promises were made decades ago. Where are they now?

Instead, I saw grade school science classes given awards for designing seed germination experiments. I saw an obese double AA astronaut launch a satellite into space that she forgot to turn on.

And for the politicization of science, I saw a former vice president calling for a satellite launched into orbit solely so we could watch the earth from outer space on its own cable TV channel. I also saw huge amounts of money trying to find ET. Remember the junk science "arsenic based life form" NASA research released a few months ago? In my former life on UseNet I asked a left winger why he was constantly posting news about NASA research showing possible water on other planets. He said water on other planets would lead to the discovery of life on other planets which would, in turn, disprove the book of Genesis and the foundations of the Catholic church. And thereby disprove the existence of God.

You can call me crazy, but I believe there are many NASA scientists who are interested in disproving God under the guise of searching for extraterrestrial life.

NASA is now operating as a totally non-productive entity. It produces as many benefits as corn subsidies. The Obama mandated, inefficient, Chinese manufactured windmills that were built according to 30 years of taxpayer funded research benefit America better than NASA.

NASA is the sick family pet that has to be put down. It did a great job in its youth hunting down the mysteries of supersonic flight and attaining orbit. And it amazed everyone when it caught the high Frisbee toss of landing on the moon.

But I think it has not only grown old but has turned rabid.

It's time to do the right thing to NASA, like Travis Coates did to Old Yeller.

154 In the last 17 years we have observed 22 impacts on Jupiter; any one of which would have wiped out humanity had they been on Earth. Recently Dr. Dallas Abbot discovered two large, confirmed, impact craters in the Gulf of Carpentaria north of Australia which dated to the fall of the Roman Empire in 525 AD. That was the global catastrophe which tree ring data confirm occurred in that year. Millions of people died as a result of those impacts. There is strong evidence that other massive impacts have occurred on Earth in the past few thousand years.

The bottom line is that Astronomers have grossly underestimated the danger of impact events.

We need NASA for when the next one of those events threaten. - in the hopes that we might be able to do something about it before it occurs. Or we could sit around doing nothing like a bunch of dinosaurs. The choice is ours.

Doing nothing didn't work out too well for T-Rex.

155 We should have had a moon base by now.  With Moon-chicks dancing in the Moon-rave-bars and discos.  Moon Val-u-rite with Moon-hooch and Moon 4x4 Jeeps and whatnot....   and freaking lasers too.. somewhere.  shooting stuff.  Wow.  We really shot the wad on the shuttle program...

156 Yip brings teh funneh. We'll need some hobo moonjerky!

157 Ultimately, no one discussing this here will make the decisions we're talking about. There comes a point where the argument devolves, and I think we reached it.

158

I'm sure Queen Isabella had some advisors who thought Columbus' proposal was a waste, too.

159

We should have had a moon base by now.  With Moon-chicks dancing in the Moon-rave-bars and discos.  Moon Val-u-rite with Moon-hooch and Moon 4x4 Jeeps and whatnot....   and freaking lasers too.. somewhere.  shooting stuff.  Wow.  We really shot the wad on the shuttle program...

Space 1999 hawt moon chicks.

And Jetson type flying cars.

160 Truth is the Columbia disaster happened in 2003. We should have had a manned flight system replacement in 2006 tops.

161 160

I'm sure Queen Isabella had some advisors who thought Columbus' proposal was a waste, too.

Posted by: Count de Monet at January 15, 2011 03:06 PM (XBM1t)

And it would have been, too, if the New World didn't have air.

162 New World = Gold and Value-Rite home base

163 By the way, as Heinlein pointed out NASA is the only government agency to pay for itself. The taxes paid on the miniature motors which were created for space use have more than paid all of NASA's budgets.

164 Truth is the Columbia disaster happened in 2003. We should have had a manned flight system replacement in 2006 tops.

Posted by: Dr. Heinz Doofensmirtz at January 15, 2011 03:11 PM (EOg8N)

The Challenger disaster in 1986 was a symptom of all these problems but it was swept under the rug and sanitized. When that investigation was over it should have been obvious that NASA was doomed. 

Government bureaucracy doomed the Challenger, it then thwarted the root cause investigation, and succeeded in doing what it does best; insuring the lifetime and expansion of itself.

165 Is the football thread up yet?  'Cause I have an awesome recipe.  *sticks out tongue*

166
165 By the way, as Heinlein pointed out NASA is the only government agency to pay for itself. The taxes paid on the miniature motors which were created for space use have more than paid all of NASA's budgets.

Posted by: An Observation at January 15, 2011 03:30 PM (ylhEn)

And the Democrat House of Congress (where and only where spending originates) wasted all of that money on "urban renewal", etc.

There's an observation for you.

167 To put the year of Gabe's birth into movie perspective, these were released in 1981: [etc.]
I hate you, Count de Monet.
8=^(

And it also shows that 1981 was a great year for movies especially compared to any crap of the past 10 years.

168 I moved to Houston about a year ago and did the obligatory NASA visit last summer. It was pathetic. Probably 60% of the place was marketing for the Clone Wars cartoon. The only person benefitting from NASA these days is George Lucas, who really needs the extra licensing fees and merchandising income. /sarc Seriously, the it was sad to see a bunch of weathering hulks that used to be proud rockets surrounded by Star Wars crap and green plastic alien cups. You'd think that perhaps you could learn something about NASAs history and how it's responsible for darn near every convenience we enjoy these days. Nope. Inflatable lightsabers and cartoon Anakin Skywalkers. I finally found displays of old dace suits... stuffed in the back of a lazily roped off area with most of the lights off. No one was bac there. The kids were all busy with the inflateable, primary colored moonwalk. The there was the tour of the training center. Sounds exciting, right? Nope. We waited for over an hour in line to board a train of golf cart like trams, then listened to a teenage tour guide gripe about funding cuts while we rode around a campus of abandoned looking, 60's architecture. Finally, we stopped at a large, primarily steel building and were herded through a hallway to look at large empty rooms with no sighn of human life; whose only features were flags commemorating past shuttle missions and other days long gone by, along with a clutter of unused "mock ups" of the space station (that I could have made in my garage with a $1000 Home Depot budget and a free weekend... and mine would have looked better). I am 100% confided that NASA is now nothing more than yet another Federal jobs program that exists for no other purpose than to employ grossly overpaid people with far too many degrees that are utterly useless in the private sector. Otherwise, it is an aging monument to precisely how and why government run entities result in nothing more than vast, failing, money pits. Imagine if NASA had always been a private sector company. It would have accomplished far more, in less time, for less money. Rather than being a rotting anachronism, it would have leveraged it's patents on damn near every useful technology invented in the 60s and 70s to turn itself into the most profitable organization in the history of the world; capable of not only supporting itself for the next 100 years, but funding unfathomable new advances in areas that we can't even conceive of. 41 years ago, NASA put people on the moon. Today, it can barely get people off the ground while a Richard Branson is trying to reinvent spaceflight from half- remembered technology that we almost routine less than 45 years ago. All the while, NASA is begging for another 100 billion dollars to pay for a bunch of unemployable egg heads to make a Rube Goldberg-esqe covered wagon or another round of studies that will ignore all evidence against global warming. The Weather Channel has better equipment these days... on 1/1000 of the budget. I say pull the plug and let all the NASA scientists get jobs washing dishes and go back to playing video games and inventing mouse traps in their parent's basements.

169 What the hell are they doing up in the space station anyway?  I do not recall a single thing of interest.  Simply surviving up there is kind of useless if they have no other mission.   Could we at least get some good free fall porn?  Can't thing of anything else that couldn't be done cheaper/better/faster by robots.

170 #135

No, BackwardsBoy, I was born in 1964 and remember the moon landings.

Please, give me a list of genuine NASA inventions that would never have sprung up just as readily from the interests of a free market. I defy you to name ten items that have a significant influence on life today that exist solely because NASA brought them about.

When I've made such challenges in the past the resulting lists inevitably contain items that predated NASA's interest or were transferred from the military.

171 #142

The problem is that NASA is quite bad at manned space travel. I'm all for sending people other places but the threat of the Sun going kablooey is a just plain dumb rationale. You're talking about an event so far off in the future that if the duration were a movie, all of human history to date wouldn't be long enough to merit a single frame.

In case you haven't noticed, we don't send people into space very often. At the time of the first moon landing we thought it was going to be a daily activity by now. Instead, we built a massive sinecure palace for bureaucrats. NASA was created as Civil War reparations, not to advance human access to the rest of the Universe. That it accomplishes anything at all is the failure of bureaucracy to complete stifle human desire. If you really want access to space to become a reality for the average person, get the government out of it. Imagine what kind of computer you'd be using to access the internet right now if such things had been left solely to government programs.

Important clue: you don't build a functional access to orbit infrastructure by putting guys on the moon. That is one of the last things you do. First you develop and master getting to orbit. After 50+ years we still aren't much good at it because of the idiotic way we've handled the R&D and outright discouraged private enterprise from taking an active role on their own tab. Will there be a death toll? You bet. Back in the old days they'd name a street at Edwards after the guy and get back to work.

172 #156

You fail to comprehend the situation at hand.

The reason we would be helpless in the face of an approaching asteroid is NASA. It has done more to prevent the development of access to space than any other entity in existence. Now, this may seem non-intuitive since you might believe NASA is supposed to promote these things but that is how bureaucratic parasites perpetuate themselves.

This is why I'd far rather have the Air Force responsible for defending the planet against external threats.

#165

That is what we like to call a myth when we're in a polite mood. Whether Heinlein believed it or not is another question. There were a few things he believed that were demonstrably nonsense, like the Bates eye exercises he once recommended to a friend of mine who discovered at a young age his lousy eye sight would keep him out of a pilot's seat. But consider Heinlein's own works and you'll see he strongly in favor of private enterprise driving new technologies.