I may be out of a job soon.
- Thread starter Steverino
- Start date
335clone
Living the dream
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Coda
Not John Watt
...if there has ever been anything that should have been filmed in HD, that was it...
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Steverino
NO VACANCY
That was killer.
The external tank is also made right here in New Orleans, at the Nasa Michoud facility. Their current role in Constellation will be the making of the Orion spacecraft among others if the program isn't axed.
Kerouac
weird musical dildo
Are you insinuating that I am not in fact, Jack Kerouac?
Coda
Not John Watt
...I just read an article about the whole cancellation of the Constellation program...and I have to revise my opposition...yes, they are canceling the program, but only to revamp it and actually do it right....From what I read, the program was using old technology to take astronauts somewhere that we'd already been...instead, they are going to use the same funding to develop a new program entirely...we're still going back to the moon, just with new and hopefully better technology...maybe even to a Martian moon, or an asteroid...
...Its a drag that you'll be loosing your job, but at least its not due to a complete abandonment of space exploration...
...Its a drag that you'll be loosing your job, but at least its not due to a complete abandonment of space exploration...
Depends on your definition of exploration. If you're talking about human spaceflight, sorry, but it is a complete abandonment of space exploration.
I work at JSC, and the mood there today was positively funereal. Just speaking for myself, I think this plan is a death knell for human space exploration by the U.S. And on the anniversary of the loss of the crew of Columbia. How fitting.
It's funny to hear NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden talk about how we need to hold off on any plans to explore space until fabulous new technologies are developed to "get us to Mars in three weeks." Really? And Christopher Columbus should have waited until there were ships that could cross the Atlantic in three days before he set off on his journey. And the American pioneers who settled the west? They were fools. If they had just waited a hundred years they could have driven to California in their cars instead of risking it in covered wagons.
I have no complaint with NASA piggybacking on commercial companies developing transportation to the space station. That's great. But without exploration, we stagnate and inspiration dies. Robotics are important too, but unfortunately NASA has been ridiculously underfunded so long that we've somehow chosen to believe that we can only have one or the other -- We can either send humans or probes into space, but not both. Such is politics.
Unless something changes, I guarantee you that we will see China land a crew on Mars before we even make it back to the moon. How can we expect NASA to get anything done if it's scrambled every four years like this?
I'd write more, but my browser already crashed once, and I don't have the heart to type this all out again.
poppypoo
Slightly-less-n00by than a few posts ago
335 - I bet you've worked with my old elementary school teacher's dad Robert Springer. A quick wiki search says he was on the Discovery in 1989 and Atlantis in 1990. I remember he came and talked to the class once - I kept questioning whether we landed on the moon, but he was a great sport about it and nicely killed my 11 year old self proclaimed genius theory.
Steverino
NO VACANCY
Absolutely agree with all of this. The U.S. is now bound to LEO for the next 20 years. Every space program risks over-budgeting and time pressure. It's space exploration for chrissakes. And we do need to get a program started and stick with it, not redirect the whole agency every time a new president is elected.
I work at SSC, and we're about 80% complete on the huge A-3 stand for high-altitude testing of the J2. Everyone here is a little shaken up, and uncertain of where we'll all be in the coming months.