20th September 2005, 3:48 PM
Geno, we CAN get beyond the atmosphere, and DO, all the frickin' time! It's not the safest thing in the world, but it has a pretty decent track record.
Oh and, what they usually do in space is experiments. The details are revealed to the public, but the news outlets just don't really care about ANOTHER floating spider or hydrofonic gardening system. Shuttle missions these days are done entirely for the long term nullification of gravity for the purposes of experimentation.
That said, there's not much on the agenda these days. The ISS, currently in orbit, was built a bit too late. There's no reason for them to be up there. All the experiments assigned to them have been completed, and now they spend their days just maintaining the station. Further, the shuttle is an outdated expensive piece of space dust. That single stage craft that successfully launched some time ago is the best project we have right now. Right now, the shuttle should probably just be out and out cancelled for good, until the new ships are ready for single stage launch and return missions. That will be cheaper by a ridiculous margin.
I'm all for space travel, but yes Commander, right now NASA seems to be putting on a show so that it CAN get to the good stuff. They haven't lied about a single thing, but it seems the government is demanding some sort of "product" from them. This whole "research and development" just isn't cutting it.
Anyway, I will say this. Humans on Mars would be a great thing for all humanity, and I look forward to that day. However, we shouldn't go there just to go there. Right now, robots on Mars are doing more than humans would have ever got the chance to. Until we actually have plans for a Mars-side station, we probably should just stick to more and more advanced robots.
Oh and, what they usually do in space is experiments. The details are revealed to the public, but the news outlets just don't really care about ANOTHER floating spider or hydrofonic gardening system. Shuttle missions these days are done entirely for the long term nullification of gravity for the purposes of experimentation.
That said, there's not much on the agenda these days. The ISS, currently in orbit, was built a bit too late. There's no reason for them to be up there. All the experiments assigned to them have been completed, and now they spend their days just maintaining the station. Further, the shuttle is an outdated expensive piece of space dust. That single stage craft that successfully launched some time ago is the best project we have right now. Right now, the shuttle should probably just be out and out cancelled for good, until the new ships are ready for single stage launch and return missions. That will be cheaper by a ridiculous margin.
I'm all for space travel, but yes Commander, right now NASA seems to be putting on a show so that it CAN get to the good stuff. They haven't lied about a single thing, but it seems the government is demanding some sort of "product" from them. This whole "research and development" just isn't cutting it.
Anyway, I will say this. Humans on Mars would be a great thing for all humanity, and I look forward to that day. However, we shouldn't go there just to go there. Right now, robots on Mars are doing more than humans would have ever got the chance to. Until we actually have plans for a Mars-side station, we probably should just stick to more and more advanced robots.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)