What? No talk about the Mars Rover? - Page 5

Captain Kwok · #41 January 11th, 2004, 09:12 PM

Isn't it interesting to see how the administration is quick to "latch" on to the early success of the latest Mars mission and grab the positive publicity and make all these grand statements about future exploration...when the real guys are making it really happen at NASA despite facing cuts and cuts for the Last two decades?

Narrew · #42 January 12th, 2004, 07:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
Isn't it interesting to see how the administration is quick to "latch" on to the early success of the latest Mars mission and grab the positive publicity and make all these grand statements about future exploration...when the real guys are making it really happen at NASA despite facing cuts and cuts for the Last two decades?

I was listening to Coast to Coast on the way home late one night a month or 2 ago and who ever was speaking said that Bush was going to make an announcement to get back into space, the thing is he may be using the the recent success as the "right" time, but it sure beats talking about it right after the Last shuttle disaster or a "lull" in news, because you can be sure that there will be many people saying why spend the money to go "back to space, lets spend it at home", so I am glad he has brought it up because we will need all the positive momentum we can get.

Of course I am biased, I wish we hadn't stopped working in space all those years ago, the longer we take to get back at it, the longer it will be until private enterprises get involved, and until then it will just be governments doing it.

And of course I have read too many Sci-Fi books about space yards and exploration, so I can be labeled naive.

ps yea I think it was the Venture Star, going to look it up now...

Narrew · #43 January 12th, 2004, 09:31 AM

yep it was VentureStar, but it was cancled in 2001, doh, I could have sworn that I heard that a place in eastern Washington (in the flat planes west of Spokane) was in the running for a space port/launch site, damn that sucks, now what they going to use, the shuttle cant Last much longer, maybe if there is some funding, they will restart VentureStar, but more than likely someone else will have a "pet project" and they will start all over.

I swear, who ever thought it was a good idea to destroy all the Saturn Rocket blueprints should be whipped with a wet noodle *sigh*

geoschmo · #44 January 12th, 2004, 04:03 PM

Right, as Oleg says not only were the plans not destroyed, I'd venture a guess that you could probably buy a set of the schematics yourself if you looked hard enough.

But the difficult part would be recreating all the factories and tooling used by the thousands of subcontractors making components all over the place. It would probably be more expensive to do it the second time around, even adjusting dollars for inflation.

[ January 12, 2004, 14:03: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Cipher7071 · #45 January 12th, 2004, 06:24 PM

Say what you want about the politics of the situation, but it would be nearly impossible to achieve anything in the space program without presidential support. I'm glad the current president approves, and hope the next one does.

It's also good that we have those old programs to look back at. We generally learn more from our failures than our successes.

[ January 12, 2004, 16:28: Message edited by: Cipher7071 ]

Narrew · #46 January 12th, 2004, 07:43 PM

DOH

can't belive I was a dupe of an urban legend. Well, the Saturn might be 60's tech, but I thought they were still the highest thrust ability next to them massive Russian rocket?

It till be interesting to see which way they go, maybe they will use a huge magnetic rail gun to throw large payloads into space

oleg · #47 January 13th, 2004, 02:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Narrew:
...I swear, who ever thought it was a good idea to destroy all the Saturn Rocket blueprints should be whipped with a wet noodle *sigh*

That's an urban legend. We can make an exact copy of SaturnV now. But that would be insane - where will you get all that 60's technology

It is far more cheaper and effective to start from scratch and take full advantage of 40 (!!!) years of progress.

Taz-in-Space · #48 January 13th, 2004, 06:51 AM

IF we get a larger space program, it will probably be rockets again.
The Space Shuttle fleet was originally only going to be a temporary measure. There is very little that we did with shuttles that we couldn't have done with rockets.
Given that Maglev is fairly new, would YOU want to be the first to try it?

I only wish we would have found Gold nuggets the size of baseballs on the moon way back then.
We'd probably would have operational MINES on the moon by now...

narf poit chez BOOM · #49 January 13th, 2004, 11:50 AM

Quote:

I only wish we would have found Gold nuggets the size of baseballs on the moon way back then.

you really want to give control of that much gold to a government?

geoschmo · #50 January 13th, 2004, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:

quote:

I only wish we would have found Gold nuggets the size of baseballs on the moon way back then.

you really want to give control of that much gold to a government?

I think the point is if we had found vast resources lying around on the moon, then by now industry and private enterprise would have found a way to get there. Rather then waiting on the government to do it all. And that would mean access to space for the rest of us that aren't in NASA.