Posted on 05/04/2015 12:03:29 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
Spot on. Good reply to an ignorant post.
We own space, for now. Thanks to Clinton allowing Loral Space to give the solid rocket secret to the Chinese, we are on the verge of NOT OWNING space.
The two junior private space agencies aren’t having much luck, of late, getting stuff to the ISS anyway. Good luck getting a main space station module up there to replace the Russians.
When a medical research company files financial statements with the SEC can it make the same excuse?
Of course not. Therefore NASA shouldn’t be allowed to make claims that it can’t back up with verifiable details.
When NASA makes a new technology, it should sell it in the market place. That way there is an economic value placed on it, and then that can be compared with the substantial capital spent on building the station along with the yearly operating costs.
Thanks for the reference.
Now even NASA itself has become a social program.
Good to know. Thanks!
I agree, mostly.
The ISS was built around the Russian modules (Zarya, etc). Theoretically they can function without the rest of the ISS (they did, initially, being the first pieces hauled up) but a big chunk of the ISS would have to be disassembled in order to get them out.
THEN they’d have to be shifted to a completely different orbit. Which isn’t going to be cheap or easy.
My guess is that this is all pre negotiation posturing/groundwork laying by Russia to either get paid more for it’s involvement in ISS (with there now being commercial competators to Progress for cargo and soon to be competators for human transport) or to have the other nations buy out it’s portion. The latter probably with a lucrative long-term contract to provide technical support for it’s old modules.
I don’t believe they have any options on it anyway — besides the problems you stated, they’d have to build something capable of taking apart and putting together the rather heavy sections, and then get that device into orbit, and for that matter, would have to sell the US and other participants on the idea.
I’d prefer that the whole thing not just get dumped into the Pacific — which will be the plan at the retirement dinner — but if the Russian sections could be removed, I’d be in favor of some private industry refurb and maintenance of the non-Russian parts of the station.
If I really got my wish, I’d like to see the Russian parts removed, some upgrades and necessary repairs, and then the whole thing sent, unmanned, on a long slow trip to rendezvous with Mars and enter orbit around it. That would give manned Mars missions a destination until such time as surface landings are feasible. It will take practice and shakedown cruises to get there and back reliably, just as the lunar missions did.
“When a medical research company files financial statements with the SEC can it make the same excuse?”
The answer is Yes, with respect to certain issues about amortization and depreciation of uncertain future revenues and the determination of future profits and losses. The answer is no, with respect to the treatment of revenues for a commercial going concern versus a government entity which must use very different accounting principles, standards, and methods for the non-commercial activities of governments. In other words, your question was an exceedingly ignorant and invalid question.
“Of course not. Therefore NASA shouldn’t be allowed to make claims that it can’t back up with verifiable details.”
NASA made claims which do have back up with verifiable details. You are just being too ignorant and dishonest in denying what you deliberately choose to not understand.
“When NASA makes a new technology, it should sell it in the market place. That way there is an economic value placed on it, and then that can be compared with the substantial capital spent on building the station along with the yearly operating costs.”
NASA is prohibited by law from selling publicly funded research. Even if NASA were able to operate like a commercial entity and maintain its accounting like a commercial entity with a reckoning of fiscal period profit and loss statements, you still would be unable to properly amortize and depreciate gross income for much of the uncertain future intellectual property (IP) developments.
Despite the inability to account for the NASA activities like a commercial entity and the inability to account for uncertain future events whether or not NASA used commercial accounting standards, NASA does maintain GASB and FASAB accounting principles, standards, and pronouncements. Even so, the kinds of line item detailed accounting you are demanding are certainly not readily available to the posters on a blog and may not be available or prepared for anyone’s use at all. In certain respects your question cannot be answered because it erroneously assumes the line item detail can be accounted for using a private commercial company’s accounting principles when NASA can only use very different government accounting standards and principles which do not calculate a commercial profit or loss.
You have also failed to answer the previous question of how you expect to account for the encapsulation research and development aboard the ISS as it is applied to new cancer fighting drugs and other applications.
“the whole thing sent, unmanned, on a long slow trip to rendezvous with Mars and enter orbit around it.”
Conceptually that would certainly be interesting. In practice, however, it appears to be virtually impossible due to the ISS maintenance requirements. It has sometimes been quite difficult to keep the ISS functioning in LEO (Low Earth Orbit), much less the more difficult supply requirements of deep space. Taking the revamped ISS outside the protection of the Van Allen Belt in LEO would place the ISS in a deep space environment where it lacks adequate radiation protection for crews and equipment. Such requirements should be kept in mind for the future with the construction of an American national space station that could then be multi-purposed for a future Mars mission or a mission placing the station at a Lagrangian Point or more specifically Earth-moon libration point 2 (EML-2).
See:
NASA Eyes Plan for Deep-Space Outpost Near the Moon
by Leonard David, Space.com’s Space Insider Columnist | February 10, 2012 07:07am ET
http://www.space.com/14518-nasa-moon-deep-space-station-astronauts.html
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