NASA abandons plan to fly new spaceships by 2013

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 8/11/08 | Irene Klotz

[null and void]

I’m not getting one. I was a bad boy.

[Toddsterpatriot]

"The window of opportunity for us to accelerate Orion has closed,"

Project Orion, now!

[Moonman62]

NASA either needs the funding for its current mandate, or it needs a better mandate that will get the funding.

[3D-JOY]

I think the goals and joint plans for the Space Station preceded “W”. Weldon has been complaining since the middle 90’s about the plan. NASA went along with it to keep the employees they had, I believe.

[3D-JOY]

Made too much money...huh?

[Sharrukin]

Which Orion?

What we need is the nuclear pulsed Project Orion; Payload: 100,000 kg (220,000 lb) to orbit.

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/orion.htm

We could invite all the NASA and Washington bureaucrats to the launch, and if we make a slight miscalculation as to how far they and the environmental protesters should be from the launch point…oh well.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Which Orion?

What we need is the nuclear pulsed Project Orion; Payload: 100,000 kg (220,000 lb) to orbit.

That's the one. Stop pussy footing around. Build a moon base and use it to build solar power satellites. Let the Arabs eat their oil.

[ApplegateRanch]

I didn’t get a stimulus check.

Me neither; not never.

If you don't mess with thems as carry's it, you doesn't needs to be checked for it later.

I've known guys who got their stimulus checked and was found positive, and the results of that weren't pretty.

[new cruelty]

Did you ever see the movie Americathon? Released in 1979, it was a sardonic tale of the United States 20 years in the future (or 1998). Anyway, I remember reading the photo novel of the movie when I was a kid and thinking how silly it was to think that any of what they portrayed could ever happen.

I found a reference for it on wikipedia:

The premise of the film is that, sometime in the then-near future (actually 1998), the USA has run out of oil, and many Americans are literally living in their (now stationary) cars and either jog or ride bicycles to travel. The federal government is near bankruptcy and in danger of being foreclosed... President Chet Roosevelt (John Ritter) hires television consultant Eric McMerkin (Peter Riegert) to help produce a national raffle. Instead, they decide that the only way enough money can be raised to save America is to run a telethon, and hire TV celebrity Monty Rushmore (Harvey Korman) to host it.

Since the storyline was set 20 years into the future, several satirical forecasts were made. Surprisingly, several of them came true:

- The People's Republic of China embracing capitalism and becoming a global economic superpower.
- The depletion of US crude oil production.
- The televised boxing match between a mother and son predicts reality television
- The President of the United States is a relative of a prior President (and is considered by many to be inept)

[null and void]

Nope. Lost money.

[Raineygoodyear]

Maybe they are worried of the Mayan Polar Shift in 2012

[I see my hands]

IMO, the primary focus right now should be the weaponization of space, and maybe it is.

[3D-JOY]

Guess in my family the poorest, who pay no taxes, and all those in the middle got checks...just the very high earners got the NO CHECK FOR YOU letter.

[I see my hands]

"I didn’t get a stimulus check."

Me neither. Nor did I get a thank you from anyone who had.

[6SJ7]

Pathetic! NASA is talking of landing men on the moon twelve years from now and yet they did it in less than ten years back in the 60's. Somehow, I think Virgin Galactic will get to the moon first; and maybe that's actually a good thing!

[Smokin' Joe]

The hallmarks of Soviet Russia have been ever present in the actions of the post-Soviet government.

A bit of insight: A Russian who was (briefly) on an oil rig I worked on said that the Russian people held Stalin in high regard, that they longed for the "strong boss" to run things--and that many would have him back in an instant.

Putin is the new 'strong boss', a KGB veteran, and being "dead" is the best thing that could have happened to Soviet Communism.

That guy did not last long on a location run by a Company Hand of Ukranian descent...

It has taken 20 years, but, according to him, many there will stand behind anyone who will return Russia to superpower status.

In the meantime, we have pissed around with kumbaya policies and cutting our own throats with the nonsense of Anthropogenic Global Warming and a lock of energy policy, as well as de-funding the hard sciences in favor of decadent studies programs at the university level.

Even our space probes are lost to math errors nthinkable in the days of the slide rule.

If we had followed Von Braun's advice and built a space station before going to the moon, we'd have seen more reason to pursue manned missions and perhaps have something other than a few worn out orbiters and a pile of moon rocks.

We have wasted the dreams of a generation and waited until fantasy is more appealing than doing the real thing.

Sadly, though, while we may have our theoretical problems with using the high ground of space militarily, our adversaries will not, and that will put us at a decided strategic disadvantage.

[MacGuffin]

“Me neither. Nor did I get a thank you from anyone who had.”

Thank you! Now I just need another one to buy that rifle I wanted.

[3D-JOY]

WOW, lots of information to think about...tomorrow I will re-read it.

Sleepy now.......zzzzz

[John Locke]

Hi Desron13

I share your despair, but I fear the issue is not one of money. You could give NASA ten times as much money and none of it would get into space; their main function is to distribute taxpayers' money to congressional districts, and has been for years.

I met Jeff Hanley when he came to Singapore and listened to his pitch - at about 8th grade level, it seemed. Afterwards I tried to ask him a few questions and he came across as a complete idiot.

Well, NASA propose to build a new heavy-lift vehicle called Ares-V. It is supposed (ha ha) to fly in 2018, and will have the same lift capacity as the Russian Energiya/Vulcan design which was tested in 1988. How's that for progress? NASA then plans to return to the Moon in (I quote their own website) "the 2020 timeframe".

For the record, 1.6 Saturn-V rockets (remember them?) could lift as much as one Ares-V, and could do so next year at about one-twentieth of the cost. So again, it's not about money.

[Saturn-V, 118 tonnes to LEO; Ares-V, 188 tonnes]

But I agree with a previous poster - build the realOrion.