Neil Armstrong to NASA: You Are an Embarassment

[Grospoliner]

..Fuck yeah! I agree with Cernan. Dust the fucking shuttles off and send them back up. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're not useful!

The space shuttle was the biggest mistake NASA ever made. It was a political showboat and little better. What we needed were proper heavy lift vehicles, not star trek style rubbish.

lolwut? What dimension are you from? The Space Shuttles are the best thing that's ever happened to space travel. No longer did we have to spend billions on disposeable hardware. The expensive parts, computers and whatnot, were reuseable. But hey, if you think they're just political showboating then how about you break out the drawing board and come up with a reuseable spacecraft to replace them.


Go on. The world waits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems

The Saturn V had nearly 5 times the lift capacity of the shuttle. 1 Saturn 5 launch could eliminate 5 shuttle missions. The Orbiter Space Shuttle is a construction platform. That's what it should have been launched into space for, that's what it should have been kept up there for, not brought back down, not used for carrying cargo.

 

[Grospoliner]

..Fuck yeah! I agree with Cernan. Dust the fucking shuttles off and send them back up. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're not useful!

The space shuttle was the biggest mistake NASA ever made. It was a political showboat and little better. What we needed were proper heavy lift vehicles, not star trek style rubbish.

lolwut? What dimension are you from? The Space Shuttles are the best thing that's ever happened to space travel. No longer did we have to spend billions on disposeable hardware. The expensive parts, computers and whatnot, were reuseable. But hey, if you think they're just political showboating then how about you break out the drawing board and come up with a reuseable spacecraft to replace them.


Go on. The world waits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems

The Saturn V had nearly 5 times the lift capacity of the shuttle. 1 Saturn 5 launch could eliminate 5 shuttle missions. The Orbiter Space Shuttle is a construction platform. That's what it should have been launched into space for, that's what it should have been kept up there for, not brought back down, not used for carrying cargo.

Oh and before I forget

Cost of a Saturn V launch: 1.11 Billion
Cost of a Shuttle Launch: 1.5 Billion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Cost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Description

 

[Darthtom1013]

..Fuck yeah! I agree with Cernan. Dust the fucking shuttles off and send them back up. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're not useful!

The space shuttle was the biggest mistake NASA ever made. It was a political showboat and little better. What we needed were proper heavy lift vehicles, not star trek style rubbish.

lolwut? What dimension are you from? The Space Shuttles are the best thing that's ever happened to space travel. No longer did we have to spend billions on disposeable hardware. The expensive parts, computers and whatnot, were reuseable. But hey, if you think they're just political showboating then how about you break out the drawing board and come up with a reuseable spacecraft to replace them.


Go on. The world waits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_heavy_lift_launch_systems

The Saturn V had nearly 5 times the lift capacity of the shuttle. 1 Saturn 5 launch could eliminate 5 shuttle missions. The Orbiter Space Shuttle is a construction platform. That's what it should have been launched into space for, that's what it should have been kept up there for, not brought back down, not used for carrying cargo.

Oh and before I forget

Cost of a Saturn V launch: 1.11 Billion
Cost of a Shuttle Launch: 1.5 Billion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_V#Cost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle#Description

does that take into effect the value of money being different for when the Saturn V rocked was built?

to answer my own question yes it does.

 

[HappyCastor]

Saddening. Astronauts want to use rickety pieces of crap, the government doesn't care either way. It seems that America has lost sight of our future, even if our time and money spent on it was just political hocus-pocus. Our economy could be fixed by a city on the moon. A city needs people to inhabit it, and people will start businesses. Helium-3 exists in abundance on the moon, and can be used in nuclear fission. Oxygen can be supplied by plants as can food. Water is re-used on the ISS, why not in this theoretical moon city? The colony could be self-sufficient and could be used as a launching platform into the rest of the solar system, as the moon's atmosphere is much easier to escape. I don't see how we could lose if proper safety precautions are made.

 

[Mr Pantomime]

But, why? Space is boring, and space exploration with current tech is ultimately pointless. So unless they want to colonise the moon, or put a man on mars, I dont see why youd bother.

Also, not wanting to go up in a Russian Space Shuttle is fucking petty. Armstrong needs to grow up.

 

[Owen Robertson]

if we combined the two NASA and the Air Force

To be a dick, maneuvering in space is a lot more like maneuvering underwater. The Air Force would handle re-entry and landings. Space piloting would be done by the Navy. And to respond to your other comments on other countries getting into space exploration: Planetary cooperation and funding will be necessary to get to Mars, let alone leave the system. Even a moon colony is economically inviable without everyones support. Landing the ISS among thousands of craters, finding a way to create oxygen and water out of thin not air (No atmosphere, get it?), and keeping people there for years to do what? Study the effects of low-gravity on screws? The moon is a barren wasteland, and apart from being a last-ditch effort to keep humanity alive after we torch this ball of shit we call Earth, what point is there to setting up shop?

 

[minuialear]

if they want to fork up the fucking billions of dollars, let em keep nasa. until we're out of this ridiculous debt we cant spend that much money on a non essential program.

Yeah man! Lets just spend several trillion on nonessential wars! Its much smarter to spend 100 bucks to do a single load of laundry in Iraq than explore and study our solar system. Its not as if the Space Shuttle ever delivered useful payloads into orbit....

Yeah! America should just drop those wars so it can develop its space program! It's not like there are repercussions with bowing out of a war before it actually gets resolved!

Come on, let's be honest for a moment. America's already in the middle of those wars, and has never been in a position to just cut its losses and abandon the countries. Considering the amount of turmoil fighting terrorist groups has caused in those countries, it would not only create a greater national security risk, but it would be irresponsible and inconsiderate to the civilians who would have to live with the conditions America abandoned them to.

So does it suck that America is spending all that money on conflicts, at least one of which never really should have occurred in the first place? Sure. Does it make sense to argue the space program should be funded by cutting funding for those currently ongoing conflicts? Not at all.

 

[N7 Ruiz]

The Shuttles were a bust from the start it was too much of a feel good America Project than a good spacecraft. They never did there designed perpose some people have asked why have we not went back to the moon it is because of that "flying brick". I live right next to one of the NASA towns you can see how a Saturn V got to the moon the shuttle cant even break orbit what we need to do is build an Orbital Elevator then space flight becomes cheaper but we need the materials than can stand the stresses needed but until NASA says Hey why dont we build a Space Elevator then they dont get it.

And about the wars thing We have always been in wars if you guys never noticed the largest US military Base is in Centeral America and all the soliders there are on temporary duty down there so...you should think and Iraq is coming to a close, Afghanistan personally I think we should take all 1-2 trillion dollars worth of titanium out of there country they are NEVER going to use it.

 

[Dorian6]

Space exploration is the most important thing we as a species can strive toward. That and world peace, but shooting people into space is so much cooler

 

[Calbeck]

We were working on something new, it was called "Constellation".

It went overbudget, so President Obama ordered it scrapped.

Recently, President Obama just ordered a "new" rocket system be developed which is expected, even at the lowest cost estimates, to be several times what Constellation cost. It's also reliant upon utilizing much of the "failed" technology the Constellation program was working on, and, get this...

...it's essentially the Nova project from the early '60s. A single giant liquid-fueled rocket with a single giant capsule on top, meant for missions as distant as Mars. Under the Administration's new "cash-saving" plan, such missions will also be heavily reliant on the International Space Station (which was never meant to do that) and auxiliary launches provided by private launch consortiums (none of which have yet done better than Burt Rutan's suborbital Spaceship One).

Brilliant, eh? We're officially back to 1964 for our main space program, with the rest of it hinging on the hope that private launch support will somehow materialize without any significant government investment --- like they've been trying to do since the '80s.

 

[Elijah Ball]

if they want to fork up the fucking billions of dollars, let em keep nasa. until we're out of this ridiculous debt we cant spend that much money on a non essential program.

Yeah man! Lets just spend several trillion on nonessential wars! Its much smarter to spend 100 bucks to do a single load of laundry in Iraq than explore and study our solar system. Its not as if the Space Shuttle ever delivered useful payloads into orbit....

did i say we should be fighting these wars?

 

[Joseph Alexander]

Is that guy somehow thinking that this is the cold war all over again. Launching money into space won't precisely help your economical problems.

- Reduce military spending by half;

- Take 1/10 of those savings;

- Spend it on a new Space Program;

- ...

- PROFIT!

wouldn't even need to touch the military budget, look at how much were spending on weapons development and "testing".
I say cut the testing see if it shoots then shoot it at some people in what ever shit-hole our military is in, if it ends up turning him into a flesh-eating goo monster... we still got a few nukes lying around somewhere.
seriously darpa spends a ton of money on some really stupid shit, they've made a lot of good stuff don't get me wrong, but holy crap some of the stuff they had to of been under the influence of drugs and crazy people to develop.
such as... a robot made of bags... that can barely fuck move... its more of less a inflating/deflating foot ball... yeah.
mean while they also have the proto 2 project which should be getting a flood of their funding... but did i mention the robot that eats stuff for fuel... oh yeah, that is really useful...

 

[legendp]

First off I am australian, and as cool as space travel is the U.S is in massive debt and space travel cost a lot of money, and even if they were not in massive debt we have enough problems to be fixed on earth already. how about helping out nations in poverty with those 30 billion dolars instead. I love the idea of space travel but until it is more affordable and has any realistic real world gain it is just a giant money hole.

 

[The Bandit]

So let me get this straight - a country that prides itself on capitalist democracy should have a socialist space program when they're still arguing socialist health care is a bad thing?

Home of the Brave...I guess the kind of bravery that's a kin to stupidity.

Yeah, because a space program is really analogous to healthcare. Everyone goes to space!

 

[Joseph Alexander]

First off I am australian, and as cool as space travel is the U.S is in massive debt and space travel cost a lot of money, and even if they were not in massive debt we have enough problems to be fixed on earth already. how about helping out nations in poverty with those 30 billion dolars instead. I love the idea of space travel but until it is more affordable and has any realistic real world gain it is just a giant money hole.

"giant money hole" one would argue helping those impoverished nations would also be a "giant money hole", except there is actual long term gain from space exploration.
and to be frank, your naive if you think monetary donation to many of those nations actually goes to helping the people who need it.

 

[Trishbot]

This is the reason I wasn't able to become an astronaut when I grew up... The US government killed the program before I could apply!

Oh well. At least we've still got baseball and apple pie.