Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: telewinz on July 28, 2005, 03:04:54 PM

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: telewinz on July 28, 2005, 03:04:54 PM

Enough is enough.  Who should we entrust NASA to?  The Airforce? the Navy? the BoyScouts(!).  I vote for a combined services program with a four star general in charge sitting at the table of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: mtnbkr on July 28, 2005, 03:07:40 PM

How about the private sector.

Chris

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: K Frame on July 28, 2005, 04:00:05 PM

Private sector has HUGE chunks of the program. My company's NASA programs, those directly involving the shuttle, run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: Waitone on July 31, 2005, 12:06:21 PM

If you are referring to the latest foam fiasco we should give the space program to the environmental nazis.  They are the one's who mau mau'd NASA into changing to an enviro friendly foam.  Trouble is the replacement is not as durable as the un-green formula.  EPA strong armed NASA into changes that in my opinion killed a shuttle full of astronauts and has seriously endangered the current batch.

Yet no one in the political world has the b. . . .er, guts to point out the facts.

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: TarpleyG on July 31, 2005, 02:53:04 PM

Waitone is on to something here.  I have heard this claim a couple of times in the 2 1/2 years since the last shuttle disaster.  Funny how no one is all over this like white on rice.

Greg

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: Felonious Monk/Fignozzle on July 31, 2005, 04:08:01 PM

While we're on the subject, and with kind deference to Mike and others who have a vested interest in continuing the whole NASA program...

I find it hard to understand how we justify the billions spent in the name of research and exploration to grow crystals in zero gravity or something EQUALLY as VITAL to mankind's very ability to sustain life, rather than focus that money on curing diseases or alleviating hunger or.....?

I assure you I am not a Blissninny, but this is the one Gubmint program that IMHO is the very definition of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse.

Thoughts?

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: TarpleyG on August 01, 2005, 02:10:31 AM

FF,

The $$$ per capita to run the space program is MINISCULE in comparison to other government waste cans.  I think the number is around $.50 per day per person.  It's worth it to me.

Greg

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: Art Eatman on August 01, 2005, 03:23:23 AM

"I find it hard to understand how we justify the billions spent in the name of research and exploration to grow crystals in zero gravity or something EQUALLY as VITAL to mankind's very ability to sustain life, rather than focus that money on curing diseases or alleviating hunger or.....?"

The spinoffs from the research and development in the space effort have resulted in many of the improvements in today's medical technology.  Even by the 1970s, NASA's return on investment was running above 10:1 per year.  simplest put, NASA hired private-sector folks to solve problems.  Those solutions had spinoffs which translated into all manner of uses never foreseen at the time of the first efforts.  We've wound up with a lot of new techniques in eye surgery, cancer/brain/heart surger--and an incredible amount of diagnostic equipment.

Not to mention the micro-miniatureization of computers and the Internet--Al Gore notwithstanding.

As far as alleviating hunger, that's not a money thing.  That's a regime-change thing.  Whether socialist or just plain thugocracy, it's governments which are at the root of that problem.  Insofar as food itself, there's an annual surplus, worldwide.  The biggest mistake that's being made in many places is the foreign aid to help the poverty-stricken.  Most of the money which is not piddled away in administrative expenses is stolen by local governemnts, winding up in Swiss or Cayman banks.  When people are trained to expect handouts, they lose the ambition to do for themselves--and their governments don't care.

Art

Title: NASA , Combined Services Space Command?
Post by: roo_ster on August 01, 2005, 07:07:02 AM

NASA's day has come and gone.  NASA & the FAA are now impediments to space exploration.

Any private copmpany with such a shoddy record would have been sued out of business:
40% (2/5) vehicles have been catastrophically lost
2% (2/113) of the missions have been catastrophic failures
2% (14/696) of the passenger & crew has died in shuttle operations

NASA launched a mere 61 satellites with these 113 missions due to:
1. Inability to go beyond a low orbit
2. High cost
...which is why many more satellites are being chucked into orbit by the Euros, Chinese, etc.

Ground the shuttles & develop a heavy-lift, high-orbit, unmanned replacement to move cargo about.  Also, abondon the ISS.

Hey, the shuttle is the best 1970's technology in the air...or strewn about the east Texas landscape...or resting on the bottom of the Atlanitc.