2057, or what will life be fifty years from now?

[CAnnoneer]

No dude, WE will be on the oil tanker    Those guys from DU will be the helpless villagers. 

Poetic justice.

[HankB]

. . . In the 1960s the USoA put people on the moon in 8 years from a standing start with 1960s Dodge Rambler technology.  Now they're talking a bullshit 15 years to do it with 45 years newer tech.  You gotta wonder what's happened. 

What happened is that rocket scientists like Werner Von Braun aren't running NASA any more, it's run by brown-nosing political hacks more interested in getting an "attaboy" from their poltical patrons than in exploring space.

For example, politics played a dominant role in both shuttle disasters.

For the first, the seamless solid boosters proposed by Aerojet in Florida were rejected, as Senator Jake Garn of Utah - a former astronaut himself - insisted that the SRB components be rail-trasportable. Aerojet's seamless SRBs would be recovered by barge, refurbished at Aerojet's coastal facility, and then barged back to the Cape. But they were TOO LONG to be rail-transportable. So with the rail requirement, the sectional booster was chosen, and Morton-Thiokol got the contract. And when the segments sprung a leak during liftoff - a leak that would not have occured with the seamless booster - the Challenger was lost. (Guess what state Morton-Thiokol is located in. Duh.)

In the second case, NASA switched to "green" foam insulation on the liquid fuel tank. NASA's OWN website reported problems with the "green" foam in that it kept falling off in chunks, but going back to what worked wouldn't be doing the "green" thing so political correctness kept them using the new stuff. And a chunk fell off, putting a hole in Columbia's wing, resulting in loss of spacecraft and crew over Texas.

Third case, the Large Space Telescope. A superb optical design was prepared, and the main mirror was ground and polished . . . TO THE WRONG FORMULA! Management, confident in their own omnipotence and eager to save a few dollars, wouldn't even authorize a simple knife-edge test which would have caught this error . . . for a small fraction of 1% of the fabrication cost. Result? A defective mirror was launched.

Ever read the comic strip Dilbert? The pointy-haired manager & others of his ilk are running NASA . . . and the VA . . . and the CDC . . . and the DOT . . . and the DOD . . . and the DOE . . . and the efforts of all the good people below them (and yes, there still are some good people) are undone or actively blocked by these <expletives deleted>.

[El Tejon]

Hank, you seem to be into this.  What caused the muffed mission to Mars a few years ago?

[mustanger98]

No dude, WE will be on the oil tanker    Those guys from DU will be the helpless villagers. 

Poetic justice.

Considering how most of the "helpless villagers" were in the movie and how they all are on DU, I'd have to agree. But how many of us really want to listen to Dennis Hopper and row that tanker/galley? And where are we gonna get enough .50BMG ammo?

[Sindawe]

What caused the muffed mission to Mars a few years ago?

Per the JPL, it was one team using English units (inches, pounds, etc) while another team was using Metric units for their work.  Therefore, its all the fault of the FRENCH!!!

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/news/mco990930.html

[Laurent du Var]

Come on now, you can't go to Mars without 75 cl of red wine and 250 gr of cheese and a baguette being at least 75 cm long !
It just can't happen, we won't have it !

[Mannlicher]

back in the thirties, forties and fifties, prognosticators would go on and on about flying cars and space travel.  What they did not envision, was the revolution in information handling, or micro electronics.
We knew about cars and planes already, and the natural assumptions then about the future revolved around inprovments to known technology.  We did not even comprehend then, the science behind the microchip.
I think the Discovery channel will miss the boat by the same large margin. There is something there, that we could touch if we thought about it, that will change everything again.

[HankB]

Hank, you seem to be into this.  What caused the muffed mission to Mars a few years ago?

Sindawe hit the nail on the head.

But truly, politics were always a part of the U.S. space program.

Why did the Russkies snag an early lead? Ike insisted that civilian rockets be developed for our launches - he didn't want to make our space program look military. It was only after the operational failure of the "civilian" Vanguard rocket that permission was granted - reluctantly - to use the Redstone.

[Manedwolf]

back in the thirties, forties and fifties, prognosticators would go on and on about flying cars and space travel.  What they did not envision, was the revolution in information handling, or micro electronics.
We knew about cars and planes already, and the natural assumptions then about the future revolved around inprovments to known technology.  We did not even comprehend then, the science behind the microchip.
I think the Discovery channel will miss the boat by the same large margin. There is something there, that we could touch if we thought about it, that will change everything again.

Some writers were prescient. Read Alfred Bester's 1956 The Stars My Destination. Not only was it proto-cyberpunk, with dysfunctional people on dangerous drugs, all-controlling corporations with allegiances, antiheros, genetically modified freaks, even a prison where prisoners were kept in total darkness...but he had TINY computers. Someone had a watch containing a computer that served as their valet, with a holographic head appearing above it to speak to them. No room-sized computers. The guy was way, way, way ahead of his time.

[Antibubba]

280plus says:

I imagine prune juice and vodka will be high on the list of beverages consumed

Known in some circles as a "Piledriver".   

[CAnnoneer]

What happened is that rocket scientists like Werner Von Braun aren't running NASA any more, it's run by brown-nosing political hacks more interested in getting an "attaboy" from their poltical patrons than in exploring space.

I think the deeper problem is that rocketry used to be a calling. It certainly was for Dr von Braun and the others of his type. For many functionaries, it has become a job, and a highly political one at that. When the primary concern is administrative CYA all the time, especially in an environment of budgetary cuts and no political margin for error, the resulting corporate culture at the higher levels is stifling at best, and toxic at worst. While the calling is preserved at the lower levels, the major decisions are taken several levels above. Finally, a jaded public has shifted its sense of wonder and danger from the past to an expectation of flawlessness and an atmosphere of witchhunts should disaster strike.

Ultimately, the decrepitude and nepotism of government bureaucracy mirror similar degeneration in private corporate management, especially since for whatever reason, gov believes that it should recruit the managers industry ejects, because of their "business experience" (sigh).