Posted on 06/02/2005 6:05:32 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Ditch the ISS and figure out how to make space profitable :)
Seriously though, that would help, and so would a realistic colony on the moon or something. We can't stay on Earth forever
Yes we do. Eliminate the manned space program and concentrate on robotic exploration. Much more bang for the buck.
Well we can thank someone for the ISS.. I agree dump the space station and have bigelow put one up at a fraction of the cost..
Basically the Chicken Sh*t of space exploration...
Send yourself back in time. Eliminate manned flight? I mean frfom the time we could control aircraft by remote. No humans equals no ambition. We are explorers. We are not French.
If we wish to create robots to inhabid space we can do it. If we wish to inhabit space ourselves, we can do that too. I opt for inhabiting space ourselves.
This isn't exclusively about taking pictures and running scientic experiments in space, near or on other celestial bodies. It's also about man taking his first steps into another frontier.
Some scientific exploration with robots is advisable. To relegate the whole space program to that, is to surrender one of man's basic desires to explore and inhabit new frontiers.
The suggest to do so is repulsive to me.
Nothing short of the survival of man may depend on conquering this frontier. Nothing short of the survival of our own nation may depend on our being the first humans to dominate there.
Someone will enter space. It better be us.
It is kind of amazing how quickly a nation can give up in a particular area. Additionally, our country appears willing to give up our overwhelming superiority in space travel to a handful of countries. I am literally dumbfounded.
AMEN AMEN and I say AMEN!!!!
If we do not move off of this rock...we will die off as a race. Exploration, that "what's on the other side of the hill" is what drives human advancement.
I was born 6 mons after the Apollo 13th incident.. It seems that people care more about Paris Hilton rather than space exploration...
Good point, my friend. It took a "can do" generation that lived through a Depression and a World War to reach the Moon in only a few years.
I take my hat off to that generation. Though I am not a fan of Tom Brokaw, perhaps they truly are/were the "Best Generation".
My generation has lived under great material wealth and little personal sacrifice. It shows in the breadth of the endeavors that "we" have accomplished.
LOL, Paris Hilton... you have to give the marketing folks massive kudos for pulling that one off.
We spent all the money NASA had for the last 30 years on manned space and what do we have to show for it? Not a damned thing from the manned program except for a dangerous shuttle servicing an outrageously expensive, never to be completed, monument to waste. Astronauts go round and round the earth proving the same thing we proved in the early years, that man is fragile and expensive to maintain in space. Other than reproving that same point again with every orbit no science has ever come from orbiting space stations. Not Mir and certainly not the ISS.
Any and all knowledge derived from space has come from robotic explorations like the Mars landers and the outer system probes and Hubble. Don't tell me Hubble is an example of the need for manned missions. If NASA had not been forced to design Hubble to fit in the cargo bay of the shuttle they could have put three Hubbles in a geosynchronous orbit for the same money.
Manned missions are a waste of money and time designed to appeal to the masses. That's their purpose, a political decision to appease the ego of the voter. Beyond that, they have no purpose.
I tend to disagree with the point that man has no purpose or need to be in space. If you had lived during the times of the opening of the "Final Frontier" I believe that you would understand the great yearning and promise that manned space flight portended. Now, after all the years of muddling from NASA, I find it easy to understand the common belief that man has no place in space.
For those of us around at the time that man first unleashed the surly bonds, the future of "every man" in space was not that hard to understand and grasp.
NASA screwing up does not "prove" that manned spaceflight is futile.
Thats a ridiculous argument.
I was in Catholic school in the 1st grade and I still remember watching on TV in the classroom as the nuns told us to pray for the astronauts.
I was around for Neil Armstrong's first step, in fact I stayed up very late to see it knowing I had to be at work early in the morning. At that time I was a huge fan of manned spaceflight. I've since come to realize that the moon program had absolutely nothing to do with exploration and everthing to do with the cold war. We put men on the moon to prove to the USSR that we could put nukes on their cities at will. It's that simple.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge fan of space exploration but I see an emphasis on manned space flight as a political ploy and a waste of resources. We need so much more knowledge about space before we can usefully send men to explore. We need better and faster propulsion systems before we can expect to transit the distance between the planets in reasonable times. Concentrating on manned missions at this point takes away from those fact gathering missions and advances in engineering because manned missions are so expensive.
I know this apostasy will get me cast out from the ranks of the true believers here. So be it. The truth hurts I guess.
The anti-humans in space seems to be grasping at straws.. Yes NASA is a screw up, but there is private industry... Next argument please...
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