Everything but the last one.
That's what I am thinking. Why did we get rid of the shuttle program anyway?
Unfortunately, we have spent ourselves into a corner. Our only hope is to cut all unnecessary spending and NASA falls flat into that category. I love NASA and space exploration, but we have to do what is right and salvage what we can. NASA hampers that process.
Unfortunately, we have spent ourselves into a corner. Our only hope is to cut all unnecessary spending and NASA falls flat into that category. I love NASA and space exploration, but we have to do what is right and salvage what we can. NASA hampers that process.
This is much closer to what should be done. I would have cancelled NASA 5 to 10 years ago...I'm thinking . . . go the opposite direction. Interior.
Yeah, they'll have to change their name to NISA. New stationery shouldn't be an obstacle, tho.
This is much closer to what should be done. I would have cancelled NASA 5 to 10 years ago...
We need work in feeding the people on this planet, there are no people in space..
Now that we've had our last Space Shuttle launch, where should NASA focus its energies?
Scrap NASA or put it on hold until we are no longer in debt. That stuff is a luxury we do not need right now, let China or some other country waste their money on that or better yet let private businesses handle that.
Now that we've had our last Space Shuttle launch, where should NASA focus its energies?
Now that we've had our last Space Shuttle launch, where should NASA focus its energies?
This idea that NASA is a "luxury" or not needed is simply ridiculous. You know what is a luxury? Air conditioning...about 20 billion of it just for tents in Iraqi and Afghanistan, while NASA's ENTIRE BUDGET is 1 billion less. I dunno man, something tells me that making sure we keep all our telecommunications, predictions of asteroids, using technologies NASA used in everyday life, etc is pretty important stuff.
I think whatever we choose to do, it has to be better than China or India. While private space exploration is fine and good, private will always have a cost motive to it that will not always directly benefit all of mankind. I think we need to thoroughly explore our options, if that is going to Mars, then the next planet, then the next until we find "God" or whatever that may be.
And do you know why we're in Iraq and Afghanistan? To procure potentially hundreds of billions of barrels of oil so that our energy economy doesn't completely collapse in the next 40-50 years while we invent, implement, and transition to better alternatives.
NASA has invented a lot for us and showed us our outer most capabilities, but the notion of humans colonizing space at this time is a pipe dream. We do not have enough collective organization, economic stability, and social equity to make that happen. Our state of development on earth demands that, for now, we stay on earth. The survivalist argument that we need space is shortsighted. What we need is all of our best minds working on our earthly problems.
There will always be research into space from terrestrial stations, but there is no point in flying to the moon again or building orbital space stations for tourists until our priorities here are fixed. Sure, private industry might take up the challenge, and start using the planet's resources to build luxurious palaces in orbit. The financial elite have already demonstrated that they are willing to screw over every last human being in order to sit on top of some delusional peak. But that is not where our priorities need to reside. Until humanity understands that, our degeneration and collapse as a civilization, and perhaps even a species, are inevitable.
I am pretty sure that in humanity's whole history we have had a whole **** load of near misses and no NASA.
If there was a asteroid large enough to be devastating to the earth could we actually do something about it?
Part of NASA's job is to figure out how to deal with such issues. The sooner that NEOs can be found the better chances we have of averting disaster thats for sure. But if NASA is closed down nothing will be done about it. You can't count on the private sector to do this kind of research as there is no profit in watching for astroids that might hit Earth.
Sorry, forgot to add that the NEO program isn't about misses. Its about identifying astroids that could hit Earth.