No more shuttles?

[Shadow_Bunnies]

The way I see it, NASA will be taking a little break for who knows how long. Private companies such as Virgin Galactic, Boeing, and the few other space companies will continue to develop tech and eventually NASA will get funded again and "borrow" some of that tech, but by then governments won't be the only one's sending up expensive ships with people to space..

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Probably for the best. It takes a lot of man hours and money to prepare someone for space. You need food, oxygen, water, stuff we take for granted up here is non-existent in space and a unmanned probe can usually get us all the info we need at a much cheaper price.

That's the thing. We are past the "info stage" and are at the colonization stage. Constellation (the new plan) would start the colonization, but the funding was cut.

It would take hundreds of trillions of dollars just to give that plan a fighting chance, and in this time of conflict, no country really has that much money to spare on the Space Race. The only planet anywhere near us where life could even be possible is Mars, and we have yet to get a human anywhere near that planet, and even then, we're still not 100% sure about Mars being a good spot. A space station would also be out of the question due to muscle loss. Until NASA can create a supplement of some sort that negates that loss entirely, colonization via Satellite would be an impossible long term goal.

They already had that mapped out. The moon would be colonized first. We are not talking star wars settlements, but rather small pioneer colonies that look more like shanty towns compared to say Corusant. However all that planning went up in smoke thanks to uncle sam and his military fetish. NASA is only 1% of the budget while military is 40%. What a joke. At least other nations are catching up, and realize space's true potential.

I'm not gonna lie about the budget. Even I would love to see some changes done to it. That said, colonization would cost much more then what we could possibly give them and it is a big risk. Things don't always go as planned and a colony would take time to raise. Not to mention that there isn't much profit to be made in colonizing outside of Earth. What could you possibly create from on the moon that could not be created here? There would be no monetary gain from it. Sure, the Human Race would benefit from it through experience, but no one is gonna back something when there is no benefit to be made other then that.

We actually don't know. There might be alloys that can only be made in low/micro gravity. Or compounds. Space made materials could be very lucrative.

Or they could be inferior to Earth made metals. You said before that they were out of the info gathering phase, but it looks like there is still some missing portions of data.

Look, I would love to see the human race move past the boundaries they've been given, but right now may not be the best time to fund it.

I didn't say we were out of the info gathering phase (that was Ultratwinkie). Everything is about gathering information and I can see going to space as only being helpful.

As do I, but at the moment, the benefits do not outweigh the costs.

Considering what all we're doing for how little we put into NASA, I think spending more is warranted.

As do I, but enough money to actually colonize a celestial body is going overboard. Especially since that in itself is going to take a considerable chunk of the budget.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

And for the benefit of everyone else, the Constellation Program isn't canceled. The Orion is named as being kept while a demand is made of NASA to build a heavy lift rocket to the exact same specs as the Ares rockets while keeping all the contracts from the Ares rockets open.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Probably for the best. It takes a lot of man hours and money to prepare someone for space. You need food, oxygen, water, stuff we take for granted up here is non-existent in space and a unmanned probe can usually get us all the info we need at a much cheaper price.

That's the thing. We are past the "info stage" and are at the colonization stage. Constellation (the new plan) would start the colonization, but the funding was cut.

It would take hundreds of trillions of dollars just to give that plan a fighting chance, and in this time of conflict, no country really has that much money to spare on the Space Race. The only planet anywhere near us where life could even be possible is Mars, and we have yet to get a human anywhere near that planet, and even then, we're still not 100% sure about Mars being a good spot. A space station would also be out of the question due to muscle loss. Until NASA can create a supplement of some sort that negates that loss entirely, colonization via Satellite would be an impossible long term goal.

They already had that mapped out. The moon would be colonized first. We are not talking star wars settlements, but rather small pioneer colonies that look more like shanty towns compared to say Corusant. However all that planning went up in smoke thanks to uncle sam and his military fetish. NASA is only 1% of the budget while military is 40%. What a joke. At least other nations are catching up, and realize space's true potential.

I'm not gonna lie about the budget. Even I would love to see some changes done to it. That said, colonization would cost much more then what we could possibly give them and it is a big risk. Things don't always go as planned and a colony would take time to raise. Not to mention that there isn't much profit to be made in colonizing outside of Earth. What could you possibly create from on the moon that could not be created here? There would be no monetary gain from it. Sure, the Human Race would benefit from it through experience, but no one is gonna back something when there is no benefit to be made other then that.

We actually don't know. There might be alloys that can only be made in low/micro gravity. Or compounds. Space made materials could be very lucrative.

Or they could be inferior to Earth made metals. You said before that they were out of the info gathering phase, but it looks like there is still some missing portions of data.

Look, I would love to see the human race move past the boundaries they've been given, but right now may not be the best time to fund it.

I didn't say we were out of the info gathering phase (that was Ultratwinkie). Everything is about gathering information and I can see going to space as only being helpful.

As do I, but at the moment, the benefits do not outweigh the costs.

Considering what all we're doing for how little we put into NASA, I think spending more is warranted.

As do I, but enough money to actually colonize a celestial body is going overboard. Especially since that in itself is going to take a considerable chunk of the budget.

We actually don't know how much it would take to colonize a planet. It'll be expensive, no doubt. But if we can make a self contained capsule that can support life in the depths of space at a half of a percent of the budget, making a dome on the Moon or Mars can't be too outrageous.

 

[spartan231490]

It was Barack,he cut NASA's funding.

The plan to stop sending shuttles was in the works long before Obama. There was supposed to be something to replace them by now, but funding cuts from Recent years have inhibited the effort somewhat. i'm sure that we will have a replacement soon enough.