At the very least, dump a lot back to debt control. I do see the importance of weather satilites, ect, but probes of venus, ect is a waste. As has been all the probes we have lost contact with, Space trash now. It still comes back down to missmanagement of the moneys/taxes.

I would like to point out that the days of 23 billion dollar missions to the moon are well and truly over taw. The cost of space flight is significantly reduced - mainly due to reusuable rockets. If it cost 8 billion a flight, would mobile phones and telecommunications companies really have satellites in space?

I doubt that the liquid oxygen and hydrogen even break a twenty million to be honest, especially for flights that only touch orbit etc. Maybe 50-100 mil in extremes, but nothing like the billions of years gone by.

I was deliberatley using hyperbole when i said 8 billion a flight, of course its not that much. However I still don't believe NASA only gets 8 billion for all its activities; that's just crap. 8 billion for purely civil programmes maybe, but there's a lot of military stuff that prob gets paid for out of the DoD budget. Creative accountancy, boys. You seriously telling me they're going to build the ISS and the spaceplanes and Moonbush Alpha on 8 billion? c'mon I wasn't born yesterday, you're having a larf aren't you?

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

As non-credible as it may seem Taw, the point is that until Dubya did his JFK imitation and announced this new plan to go to Mars (don't know how yet), both the Democrats and the Republicans have been whittling away at the NASA budget for decades.

BTW, as I mentioned, the FY 2004 NASA budget has more than doubled to almost $18 Billion.

Congress habitually appropriates less than what is being asked for. It goes against their nature to do otherwise.

Also, the NASA budget is the stuff for space exploration and civil aeronautics, etc. The work NASA's units do for the military is in the Department of Defense Budget .. i.e. Jet Propulsion Labs, stuff out in New Mexico.

Besides, the defense work... waste of money or not, is not the subject of this particular tangent off this thread.

ah see i knew all their stuff wasn't paid for out of their own budget that'll be those $20,000-00 toilet seats and $5000-00 hammers..

..how I dearly wish I was not here..

Uh. No. NASA doesn't have anything to do with equipping the military. NASA's facilities are employed to develop new technologies, not solid gold toilet seats.... like you didn't know.

Bah! All of those American agencies are in it together Ed; it's a conspiracy!

"we shouldn't risk humans", that's all well and good but I am willing to bet any amount of money that if NASA came out and said they wanted volunteers to fly to Jupiter on a one way trip and that when you ran out of food you could either starve or take a cyanide capsule, they would get five million volunteers. Exploration is a natural part of the human heart, and I don't think we'll have any trouble finding people willing to take the risks.
As to the idea that we can't fund space exploration because of military expeditures maybe you sould take a look at where the Federal government spends its money. In the 60's military spending was about half of the federal budget but nowadays its only about a tenth of the budget.
As to the idea that we should quit funding the military and use the money to somehow subscribe to the Kyoto treaty. If the United States were to become a victim of the Kyoto treaty is would ruin our economy which would slash government revenues, because people with no moeny can pay no taxes, and then we wouldn't have enough money to fund NASA, the department of defence, the department of education or the ineffective, feel-good, social programs that suck up about half of our federal budget.

Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!!

exploration rot, Ugn. They want to go to Mars because it's to their advantage to do so. no other reason, certainly nothing as idealistic as some romantic Star-Trek notion of "pushing back the frontiers."

There's something on Mars the US Govt wants to be first to get hold of - resources or maybe something more sinister. And they don't want to share it.

..trudging back over pebbles and sand..

Must admit - would love to know how much companies pay to get their satellites into orbit - and who on earth tells them which orbit they can have? or who keeps track of it all? All i do know is that the European rockets mainly do most of it now, as its cheaper than the american shuttles

i imagine norad would tell them or someone similiar

our shuttles are worthless we need to update the fleet before we go back up into space, did you see the columbia go up in smoke thats bad, bad for the brave astronaust, bad for nasa (makes them and the u.s. government look bad) and bad for the tax payers, i say stick with the probes for now
edit-
till they update the shuttles at least
i went a little political, sorry

Edited by - arton alpha on 6/1/2004 11:22:35 AM

I always said those dam' shuttles were unsafe, right back when they flew the first one. When Challenger blew up I wasn't the least bit surprised. Death-traps, that's what they are. You wouldn't get me in one.

What color is the sky in your world, Tawaka? There's something "sinister" on Mars that the US government wants to get ahold of? That doesn't make any sense. I suppose the CIA sabotaged that European Mars lander (I think it was the Beagle) because they don't want anyone finding out what's up there before we can get our hands on it. If we were only willing to go to other worlds to exploit them why aren't we exploiting the moon. As far as I know we landed there to explore and do science experiments and to prove it could be done. Maybe the Apollo program was part of some evil plot to take over the world. (that's real long range thinking because the Apollo program has been over for 30 years and we haven't taken over the world yet) I suppose the moon is covered with secret CIA and Department of Justice installations, so John Ashcroft can use the moon as a base to take away everyone's civil liberties.
If we ever do land on Mars we'll have a bunch of conspiracy theorists claiming it was faked at some Hollywood studio, just like people say the moon landings were faked.

Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!!