• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Leave one Space Shuttle Operational?

Should the US keep one shuttle operational till the next generation?

  • Total voters
    26
solletica said:
To be fair, the US govt and the private sector are not even separate entities. In reality, powerful organizations within the private sector just rent the US govt for the sole purpose of stealing money from the public (via taxes) to advance their own agenda or merely fatten itself.

The essence of the problem is not that governments are always worse than private firms--they are merely institutions, like their private counterparts.

The problem is that in the good 'ol USA, the government is not hired for specific projects/services voluntarily by the people, based on what the people believe is a sensible use of their money.

Rather, Uncle Sam just steals money from the people to do its own thing, and that's the root of all the inefficiencies.
Click to expand...

Well, I sure can't disagree with that.
 
Cephus said:
We shouldn't have stopped the program until we had a replacement in place.
Click to expand...

Actually, I think we had stopped the program when we should have, but I think we should have had a replacement program already in place by now.
 
solletica said:
Move on is putting it mildly. There is no real space exploration until some sort of faster-than-light transport system (i. e. warp drive, teleportation) has been developed.

IMHO, money and time would be better spent on physicists working on a theoretical breakthrough to allow that instead of just hauling more stuff into low earth orbit or into the solar system.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Space exploration is everything NASA has done so far. To ignore and cancel NASA would be short sighted. NASAs funding should be doubled.
 
hallam said:
I disagree. Space exploration is everything NASA has done so far. To ignore and cancel NASA would be short sighted. NASAs funding should be doubled.
Click to expand...

If you would like to double NASA's funding, you're welcome to write your own checks to that agency, or wire money from your account to NASA's account to fulfill that funding goal, and tell your friends to do the same.

Just as long as it keeps its hands off my stash until I want to fund something it does.
 
atrasicarius said:
You're gonna be waiting a long time then, since FTL travel is impossible outside of Star Trek.
Click to expand...

With NASA wasting taxpayer money just putting stuff into low Earth orbit, it'll never be possible. Many physicists would be glad to work on FTL research if they were paid handsomely for it, i. e. if the money used to launch shuttles into orbit instead went to their pockets.

Sure, it'll take a long time. I'm estimating at least 220 years before the first teleportation or warp drive, and at least 60 years for the theoretical breakthrough to allow it (assuming the physicists are getting the funding they want).

But that commitment must be made now, and preferably, via private donations (made possible by reduced taxes from de-funding NASA). I don't believe in stealing money from others to sponsor my own agenda.
 
solletica said:
With NASA wasting taxpayer money just putting stuff into low Earth orbit, it'll never be possible. Many physicists would be glad to work on FTL research if they were paid handsomely for it, i. e. if the money used to launch shuttles into orbit instead went to their pockets.

Sure, it'll take a long time. I'm estimating at least 220 years before the first teleportation or warp drive, and at least 60 years for the theoretical breakthrough to allow it (assuming the physicists are getting the funding they want).

But that commitment must be made now, and preferably, via private donations (made possible by reduced taxes from de-funding NASA). I don't believe in stealing money from others to sponsor my own agenda.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna have to disagree with that one. FTL travel of any type violates causality, which means time travel, which means all sorts of fun, physically impossible paradoxes. It would also be possible to use it to violate thermodynamics in a few ways. For example, you could open a wormhole above a linked wormhole, put a turbine in the middle, and run water through it for infinite energy. Aside from that, if FTL travel is possible, then where are the aliens at?
 
solletica said:
If you would like to double NASA's funding, you're welcome to write your own checks to that agency, or wire money from your account to NASA's account to fulfill that funding goal, and tell your friends to do the same.

Just as long as it keeps its hands off my stash until I want to fund something it does.
Click to expand...

I am free to vote for individuals who look forward and understand that NASA is one of the most beneficial programs this country has ever had. The thing with taxes is that sometimes tax dollars go to something people may not agree with. Might I add that if people can move their tax dollars to things you want, how soon do you think Social Security and Medicare get de-funded? No, your ideas, though I respect you for having them and you are free to express them, are completely wrong. Wrong for the nation, wrong even for the globe.
 
atrasicarius said:
I'm gonna have to disagree with that one. FTL travel of any type violates causality, which means time travel, which means all sorts of fun, physically impossible paradoxes.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't--there are several ways to resolve those paradoxes. One solution is that what has happen until now is what is supposed to have happened within the timeline, so any attempt to alter it by going back in time is impossible. The other resolution is to just allow the alternate timeline to occur in a parallel universe. The 3rd solution is to just have the entire timeline be altered to reflect the change that occurred due to intervention in the past.

atrasicarius said:
It would also be possible to use it to violate thermodynamics in a few ways. For example, you could open a wormhole above a linked wormhole, put a turbine in the middle, and run water through it for infinite energy.
Click to expand...

The turbine would slow down the flow of the water, meaning that the velocity at which the water fell into the sucking wormhole would slow down, which in turn would slow down the velocity at which the water came out of the supply wormhole. Over time, the supply wormhole would cease to put out any water.

atrasicarius said:
Aside from that, if FTL travel is possible, then where are the aliens at?
Click to expand...

First, the only aliens that need FTL travel are corporeal lifeforms like us or those that experience time in a linear fashion and/or have a finite lifespan, grow old over time and die. Any non-corporeal lifeform and/or species that can naturally move through time as easy as space doesn't need FTL travel, much less a spaceship of any kind.

Second, those linear-time aliens may be forbidden from making first contact w/us by the intervention of other alien species (a la 2010 Space Odyssey).

In short, my attitude is to just work out the equations for FTL travel and assume God designed the universe in such a way as to mop up any paradoxes that would occur as a result of it.
 
hallam said:
I am free to vote for individuals who look forward and understand that NASA is one of the most beneficial programs this country has ever had. The thing with taxes is that sometimes tax dollars go to something people may not agree with.
Click to expand...

Most of the tax dollars in the US go to things the majority do no agree with.

hallam said:
Might I add that if people can move their tax dollars to things you want, how soon do you think Social Security and Medicare get de-funded?
Click to expand...

Individuals can voluntarily contribute money to private investment pools. SS is not needed.

hallam said:
No, your ideas, though I respect you for having them and you are free to express them, are completely wrong. Wrong for the nation, wrong even for the globe.
Click to expand...

It's wrong to steal--doesn't matter if the theft is in the form of taxation.

Plus, you're making the erroneous assumption that the government is some entity separate from the private sector that aims to serve the public interest.
 
The shuttle program is outdated and the technology is old. Other countries can do it more cheaply and more efficiently than we can. The Russians will sustain the space program while we sort out our economy.

I know a lot of people say that NASA is responsible for good invention. That's true, but we don't need NASA in order to invent. The whole reason why we engaged in the space race was to beat the Soviets and to establish orbital supremacy. We not only did that, but we transcended the conflict and started forming a working relationship in space.

I would rather see our dollars spent on earthly matters at this point.
 
solletica said:
The US govt is doing a lousy job of providing security, as has become evident on 9/11 and w/the useless Transportation Groping Administration.

And the reason is that the govt does not act in the interests of the people, but rather only in the interests of the private firms that lobby it. The so-called "defense" spending of the US is merely a taxpayer funded payoff for contractors who want to peddle their useless toys (the latest tanks and planes) that have proven to be useless against modern (guerilla-type) threats.

IMHO, the Framers made a huge blunder when they wrote the "provide for the common defence" clause.



GPS and cell phones can be made to work without satellites, using land-based towers and undersea fiber cabling, and all those already exist, and cost much less to build/maintain.



In most cases, no. However, private institutions/individuals do occasionally fund the causes that interest them, including space exploration, i. e. SpaceShipOne funded by Burt Rutan and Paul Allen. And that's all we need. Furthermore, for space exploration to advance requires theoretical breakthroughs, and that requires great minds and a lot of pencil and paper.

Instead of the govt taxing individuals to build and deploy more low Earth orbit junk, voluntary donations should be collected from individuals and institutions to fund physicists to work on those breakthroughs. Without warp drive/teleportation, space is pretty much off limits anyway, so theory advancement is where the money should be spent.
Click to expand...

Guess what, providing for the common defence was the primary reason for the Union. I would amaze the Framers had they known their primary reason for forming a union was a blunder.
 
Temporal said:
The shuttle program is outdated and the technology is old. Other countries can do it more cheaply and more efficiently than we can. The Russians will sustain the space program while we sort out our economy.

I know a lot of people say that NASA is responsible for good invention. That's true, but we don't need NASA in order to invent. The whole reason why we engaged in the space race was to beat the Soviets and to establish orbital supremacy. We not only did that, but we transcended the conflict and started forming a working relationship in space.

I would rather see our dollars spent on earthly matters at this point.
Click to expand...

You talk about how the shuttle is out dated and then refer to the Russians as the prime example? Their space craft can't even land. It has very little cargo room. It is preshuttle technology.
 
American said:
Guess what, providing for the common defence was the primary reason for the Union. I would amaze the Framers had they known their primary reason for forming a union was a blunder.
Click to expand...

I'm referring to the part in the Constitution that authorizes Congress to tax for that purpose.

We don't need taxes to implement defense.
 
ksu_aviator said:
You talk about how the shuttle is out dated and then refer to the Russians as the prime example? Their space craft can't even land. It has very little cargo room. It is preshuttle technology.
Click to expand...

No it's not, it's pre-Apollo technology.
 
ksu_aviator said:
You talk about how the shuttle is out dated and then refer to the Russians as the prime example? Their space craft can't even land. It has very little cargo room. It is preshuttle technology.
Click to expand...

The Russians built their own space shuttle, the Buran, that could not only land but land w/out any pilots.

They scrapped it because it wasn't worth the investment, a fact which NASA has only now realized.
 
solletica said:
The Russians built their own space shuttle, the Buran, that could not only land but land w/out any pilots.

They scrapped it because it wasn't worth the investment, a fact which NASA has only now realized.
Click to expand...

Actually it was scrapped because Gorbachev did not like space programs. Besides, it was just a shuttle knock off...it was embarrassing for them to just be copying the Americans rather than creating their own technology.
 
solletica said:
I'm referring to the part in the Constitution that authorizes Congress to tax for that purpose.

We don't need taxes to implement defense.
Click to expand...

I'm prolly going to regret asking this but...how the hell do you expect the government to implement a defense without taxes?
 
Shutting it down is a bad idea, we should have at least one or two operational. That being said, letting the private sector take over is a damn good idea, but our government should have a small if not lean program in the background.
 
solletica said:
Most of the tax dollars in the US go to things the majority do no agree with.



Individuals can voluntarily contribute money to private investment pools. SS is not needed.



It's wrong to steal--doesn't matter if the theft is in the form of taxation.

Plus, you're making the erroneous assumption that the government is some entity separate from the private sector that aims to serve the public interest.
Click to expand...

These are strawmen arguments. You said that NASA needs to be de-funded and that if I wanted it funded I can spend my own money. This is not a counter argument. If you don't like that NASA will continue to be funded and that people like me will vote for individual who will increase that funding is how this government works. it isn't stealing; it enfranchisement.
 
solletica said:
No it doesn't--there are several ways to resolve those paradoxes. One solution is that what has happen until now is what is supposed to have happened within the timeline, so any attempt to alter it by going back in time is impossible. The other resolution is to just allow the alternate timeline to occur in a parallel universe. The 3rd solution is to just have the entire timeline be altered to reflect the change that occurred due to intervention in the past.
Click to expand...

There are actually reasons why none of those will work. I'll divide them up into 1-3 to address them:
1. This is contradicted by chaos theory, i.e. a small change in a chaotic system will result in a vastly different outcome. It also has problems with thermodynamics, since someone in a closed time loop would have to be immune to entropy. It also would mean that free will doesn't exist.
2. Possible, but extremely unlikely. If it's true, then where are the time travelers? The probability that we're living in the original universe without any time travelers is vanishingly small.
3. Impossible, because it leads to the Grandfather paradox and all that fun stuff.

solletica said:
The turbine would slow down the flow of the water, meaning that the velocity at which the water fell into the sucking wormhole would slow down, which in turn would slow down the velocity at which the water came out of the supply wormhole. Over time, the supply wormhole would cease to put out any water.
Click to expand...

No it wouldn't, because gravity continuously pulls down. By teleporting something to a higher potential energy, you're violating thermodynamics.

solletica said:
First, the only aliens that need FTL travel are corporeal lifeforms like us or those that experience time in a linear fashion and/or have a finite lifespan, grow old over time and die. Any non-corporeal lifeform and/or species that can naturally move through time as easy as space doesn't need FTL travel, much less a spaceship of any kind.

Second, those linear-time aliens may be forbidden from making first contact w/us by the intervention of other alien species (a la 2010 Space Odyssey).

In short, my attitude is to just work out the equations for FTL travel and assume God designed the universe in such a way as to mop up any paradoxes that would occur as a result of it.
Click to expand...

Well, that doesn't offer much to those of us who don't believe in God. There's a whole lot of unproven assumptions there for FTL to work.
 
Kal'Stang said:
I'm prolly going to regret asking this but...how the hell do you expect the government to implement a defense without taxes?
Click to expand...

First, it's worth noting that the current federally government is completely inept at implementing defense even with all its taxes.

But you got the idea :) Under my system, the federal government does not implement defense. Instead, every year, each individual will have the opportunity to decide for each defense-related activity, who they want their monthly payments to go to, i. e. they will grant various defense firms a one year electronic funds transfer authorization from their Swiss bank accounts (or the equivalent).

If none of the firms will get adequate funding based on the authorizations, so be it--they will have to market themselves to the public until a select few win enough support for regular funding.

Of course, such a system will take time to set up, but at least it will be somewhat efficient (i. e. work), as opposed to the current $100 billion/year taxpayer/deficit-funded system where less than 1% of that money is actually spent on defense.
 
atrasicarius said:
There are actually reasons why none of those will work. I'll divide them up into 1-3 to address them:
1. This is contradicted by chaos theory, i.e. a small change in a chaotic system will result in a vastly different outcome. It also has problems with thermodynamics, since someone in a closed time loop would have to be immune to entropy. It also would mean that free will doesn't exist.
2. Possible, but extremely unlikely. If it's true, then where are the time travelers? The probability that we're living in the original universe without any time travelers is vanishingly small.
3. Impossible, because it leads to the Grandfather paradox and all that fun stuff.



No it wouldn't, because gravity continuously pulls down. By teleporting something to a higher potential energy, you're violating thermodynamics.



Well, that doesn't offer much to those of us who don't believe in God. There's a whole lot of unproven assumptions there for FTL to work.
Click to expand...

You don't have to believe in God. You just have to have faith that the Universe was set up to allow for reverse time travel w/out violating any of its basic laws (some of which we may not be currently aware of).

Also, you need to understand that the concept of time as being something purely sequential is merely a human bias stemming from our inability to typically perceive it in a non-sequential fashion. Time can be thought of as merely another dimension.
 
solletica said:
You don't have to believe in God. You just have to have faith that the Universe was set up to allow for reverse time travel w/out violating any of its basic laws (some of which we may not be currently aware of).

Also, you need to understand that the concept of time as being something purely sequential is merely a human bias stemming from our inability to typically perceive it in a non-sequential fashion. Time can be thought of as merely another dimension.
Click to expand...

 
I think the feds should have kept every program in place until they got a replacement. It's long over due. They also need to look into sponsoring/partnering with Virgin who is developing a shuttle program that will make commercial flights into space. There is so much money that can be made with the commercial flights that could benefit NASA and the private sector.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom