• 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!

NASA Has A New Rocket For Mars

ludin said:
it was bush was in the process of switching from the shuttle program to constellation program.
it was bush's idea to stop the shuttle and build a new rocket. the funding and everything was in place
to start back up in like 2014 or something like that with the new rocket.

Obama came through and squashed the program fully.
thousands of people lost their jobs, homes, and everything else around here when Obama shut down nasa
after standing there saying he wouldn't.
Click to expand...

compare and contrast the space programs of both presidents:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_George_W._Bush_administration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_policy_of_the_Barack_Obama_administration

one of them will be found VERY wanting. it is NOT Obama's
 
Fenton said:
Don't agree with the whole Shuttle thing. Sure we lost two, but during its heyday the launched a shuttle once a Month

Without it, we couldn't have repaired and upgraded the Hubble.

It got to be such a regular thing that the American public quit paying attention.

As far as Mars is concerned, I think its a massive waste of money.

We will never terraform Mars. Let Elon Musk try so we can have a good laugh and stop spending money on getting people to a dead planet.
Click to expand...

We lost two....that was 40% of the fleet. Unacceptable loss of equipment and lives.

I already schooled you about launching a shuttle a month, the most ever launched in a year was 9 in 1985. Lets look at the actual number of launches per year again: 1981: 2 1982: 3 1983: 4 1984: 5 1985: 9 1986: 2: 1987: 0 1988: 2 1989: 5 1990: 6: 1991: 6 1992: 8 1993: 7 1994: 7 1995: 7 1996: 7 1997: 8 1998: 5 1999: 3 2000: 5 2001: 6 2002: 5 2003: 1 2004: 0 2005:1 2006: 3 2007:3 2008: 4 2009: 5 2010: 3 2011: 3.

When they were rushing to complete an overly optimistic and not realistic schedule, many safety issues were overlooked, and there were many near misses before Challenger, and again before Columbia.

The shuttle was overly complex, overly dangerous, couldn't carry heavy enough cargo, and was riddled with delays and design issues, and 14 people died. Because of the shuttle, several other heavy lift rockets were cut way back, and we paid for it during the years of delays of retrofitting existing cargo that was built specifically to go on the shuttle onto other rockets that needed to be built.

The next gen of telescopes, the James Webb Telescope is much larger and won't be launched from a shuttle.
 
Last edited:
Fenton said:
Don't agree with the whole Shuttle thing. Sure we lost two, but during its heyday the launched a shuttle once a Month

Without it, we couldn't have repaired and upgraded the Hubble.

It got to be such a regular thing that the American public quit paying attention.

As far as Mars is concerned, I think its a massive waste of money.

We will never terraform Mars. Let Elon Musk try so we can have a good laugh and stop spending money on getting people to a dead planet.
Click to expand...

I don't agree with the Shuttle part (for many of the reasons beefheart lists)...but I agree with and loved the way you phrased the rest of it (especially the last sentence). Lol.
 
beefheart said:
We lost two....that was 40% of the fleet. Unacceptable loss of equipment and lives.

I already schooled you about launching a shuttle a month, the most ever launched in a year was 9 in 1985. Lets look at the actual number of launches per year again: 1981: 2 1982: 3 1983: 4 1984: 5 1985: 9 1986: 2: 1987: 0 1988: 2 1989: 5 1990: 6: 1991: 6 1992: 8 1993: 7 1994: 7 1995: 7 1996: 7 1997: 8 1998: 5 1999: 3 2000: 5 2001: 6 2002: 5 2003: 1 2004: 0 2005:1 2006: 3 2007:3 2008: 4 2009: 5 2010: 3 2011: 3.

When they were rushing to complete an overly optimistic and not realistic schedule, many safety issues were overlooked, and there were many near misses before Challenger, and again before Columbia.

The shuttle was overly complex, overly dangerous, couldn't carry heavy enough cargo, and was riddled with delays and design issues, and 14 people died. Because of the shuttle, several other heavy lift rockets were cut way back, and we paid for it during the years of delays of retrofitting existing cargo that was built specifically to go on the shuttle onto other rockets that needed to be built.

The next gen of telescopes, the James Webb Telescope is much larger and won't be launched from a shuttle.
Click to expand...


Lol....you schooled no one. You just displayed allot of ignorance. Really, lost 40 % of the fleet ? That's such a made up and arbitrary standard of reliability.

The worlds first reusable space craft flew from 1981 to 2011.

There were a total of 135 Missions that took a total of 789 Astronauts and Cosmonauts ( 355 different people from 16 different Nations ) into low orbit were they spent a Total of 1,322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds in space.

The shuttles docked with Russian space station a total of Mir 9 times and visited the ISS 37 times and delivered over 3 million pounds of cargo into space. There were also a total of 27 Space Lab missions flown.

It launched the Hubble telescope, repaired and upgraded the Hubble telescope and that led to some of the most spectacular images of our Universe ever taken...

Pillars of the Universe
maxresdefault.jpg

Deep Space Field Pic...
download.jpg

Reliability ?

The Shuttle's main engine, ( on lift off the three main engines could create a maximum of 37,000,000 HP ) the Aerojet Rocketdyne's Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) is the world’s most reliable and highly tested large rocket engine ever built, and operates at greater temperature extremes than any mechanical system in common use today. SSME operates under temperatures ranging from -423º Fahrenheit to +6000º Fahrenheit.

The SSME has achieved 100 percent flight success with a demonstrated reliability exceeding 0.9996 in over 1,000,000 seconds of hot-fire experience.

The shuttle was also dead stick landed from orbit every time. It was essentially a glider with no power and no second chances.

Yes, it was expensive, I suppose your'e all for blasting Americans into orbit on a budget ? It was a amazing accomplishment thanks to the tens of thousands of hardworking Americans, some of our smartest even.

What have we accomplished in the last 7 years as a Nation ? Anything remotely as significant ? Nope, America according to the last Democrat debate is a nation filled with disparity and hopelessness, racist and victims.
 
Fenton said:
Lol....you schooled no one. You just displayed allot of ignorance. Really, lost 40 % of the fleet ? That's such a made up and arbitrary standard of reliability.

The worlds first reusable space craft flew from 1981 to 2011.

There were a total of 135 Missions that took a total of 789 Astronauts and Cosmonauts ( 355 different people from 16 different Nations ) into low orbit were they spent a Total of 1,322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds in space.

The shuttles docked with Russian space station a total of Mir 9 times and visited the ISS 37 times and delivered over 3 million pounds of cargo into space. There were also a total of 27 Space Lab missions flown.

It launched the Hubble telescope, repaired and upgraded the Hubble telescope and that led to some of the most spectacular images of our Universe ever taken...

Pillars of the Universe
View attachment 67197049

Deep Space Field Pic...
View attachment 67197050

Reliability ?

The Shuttle's main engine, ( on lift off the three main engines could create a maximum of 37,000,000 HP ) the Aerojet Rocketdyne's Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) is the world’s most reliable and highly tested large rocket engine ever built, and operates at greater temperature extremes than any mechanical system in common use today. SSME operates under temperatures ranging from -423º Fahrenheit to +6000º Fahrenheit.

The SSME has achieved 100 percent flight success with a demonstrated reliability exceeding 0.9996 in over 1,000,000 seconds of hot-fire experience.

The shuttle was also dead stick landed from orbit every time. It was essentially a glider with no power and no second chances.

Yes, it was expensive, I suppose your'e all for blasting Americans into orbit on a budget ? It was a amazing accomplishment thanks to the tens of thousands of hardworking Americans, some of our smartest even.

What have we accomplished in the last 7 years as a Nation ? Anything remotely as significant ? Nope, America according to the last Democrat debate is a nation filled with disparity and hopelessness, racist and victims.
Click to expand...

How many Space Shuttles were built?

Answer: 5

How many Space Shuttles were lost?

Answer: 2

Divide 2 by 5, what do you get?

40% of the Space Shuttle FLEET was destroyed. Do you understand what "fleet" means? It means the number of space shuttle orbiters. 5 orbiters - 2 destroyed = 40% of the number of orbiters "aka fleet"

Please, just try to make your argument more stupid.

I dare ya.

(the rest of what you posted, including the pictures have NOTHING to do with the fact that the Shuttle Program was a failure, too expensive, too risky and we have 14 dead astronauts, you never put human lives in the midsection of a rocket stack, without a means of escape)
 
Last edited:
ecofarm said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_program#Accomplishments
Click to expand...

They all could have been launched with a dependable, reliable manned rocket. In fact, because of the shuttle, many other satellite launchers were drawn down, and when Challenger happened, there were all kinds of payloads that had to wait years for a launch.

The Shuttle was a triumph of engineering, I know people that worked on it, I've met astronauts that flew on it. I was one of the biggest space shuttle geeks and backers you could have ever met.

However, it was completely unnecessary, overly expensive, overly dangerous and not needed. We spent all our money on a fancy vehicle to get into space, but we didn't need a fancy vehicle to get into space, we needed a reliable one that was proven and safe. We were sold a lie, the shuttle was never going to be launching every few weeks. One good thing that happened, after Challenger, NASA abandoned plans to do polar flights of the shuttle from Vandenberg AFB (SLC-6), using an untested spun fiberglass built SRB (necessary because the regular SRB's were too heavy to launch into that orbit, and too heavy to launch larger payloads). The very real possibility of a very bad disaster (the shuttle blowing up over some very populated areas S. of Vandenberg) was very real.

You don't need to waste billions to get into orbit with an overly complex system like the space shuttle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program

Criticism of the Space Shuttle program stems from claims that NASA's Shuttle program has failed to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues.[1] More specifically, it has failed in the goal of reducing the cost of space access. Space Shuttle incremental per-pound launch costs ultimately turned out to be considerably higher than those of expendable launchers:[2] by 2011, the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was estimated at $450 million,[3] or $18,000 per kilogram (approximately $8,000 per pound) to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, Russian Proton expendable cargo launchers (Atlas V rocket counterpart), still largely based on the design that dates back to 1965, are said to cost as little as $110 million,[4] or around $5,000/kg (approximately $2,300 per pound) to LEO. When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or $60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO.[5] This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per pound of payload in 1972 dollars (approximately $657 per pound adjusting for inflation to 2013).[6]

It failed in the goal of achieving reliable access to space, partly due to multi-year interruptions in launches following Shuttle failures.[7] NASA budget pressures caused by the chronically high NASA Space Shuttle program costs have eliminated NASA manned space flight beyond low earth orbit since Apollo, and severely curtailed use of unmanned probes.[8] NASA's promotion of and reliance on the Shuttle slowed domestic commercial expendable launch vehicle (ELV) programs until after the 1986 Challenger disaster.[9]
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
beefheart said:
They all could have been launched with a dependable, reliable manned rocket. In fact, because of the shuttle, many other satellite launchers were drawn down, and when Challenger happened, there were all kinds of payloads that had to wait years for a launch.

The Shuttle was a triumph of engineering, I know people that worked on it, I've met astronauts that flew on it. I was one of the biggest space shuttle geeks and backers you could have ever met.

However, it was completely unnecessary, overly expensive, overly dangerous and not needed. We spent all our money on a fancy vehicle to get into space, but we didn't need a fancy vehicle to get into space, we needed a reliable one that was proven and safe. We were sold a lie, the shuttle was never going to be launching every few weeks. One good thing that happened, after Challenger, NASA abandoned plans to do polar flights of the shuttle from Vandenberg AFB (SLC-6), using an untested spun fiberglass built SRB (necessary because the regular SRB's were too heavy to launch into that orbit, and too heavy to launch larger payloads). The very real possibility of a very bad disaster (the shuttle blowing up over some very populated areas S. of Vandenberg) was very real.

You don't need to waste billions to get into orbit with an overly complex system like the space shuttle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program
Click to expand...

Could be so. I still wouldn't call it a failure.
 
ecofarm said:
Could be so. I still wouldn't call it a failure.
Click to expand...

It failed in every single goal that was set for it, it killed 14 people, and it set back our manned space program and extendable launch vehicle program.

Boondoggle.
 
beefheart said:
How many Space Shuttles were built?

Answer: 5

How many Space Shuttles were lost?

Answer: 2

Divide 2 by 5, what do you get?

40% of the Space Shuttle FLEET was destroyed. Do you understand what "fleet" means? It means the number of space shuttle orbiters. 5 orbiters - 2 destroyed = 40% of the number of orbiters "aka fleet"

Please, just try to make your argument more stupid.

I dare ya.

(the rest of what you posted, including the pictures have NOTHING to do with the fact that the Shuttle Program was a failure, too expensive, too risky and we have 14 dead astronauts, you never put human lives in the midsection of a rocket stack, without a means of escape)
Click to expand...

Hahaha !! Hilarious.

Using your ridiculous made up standard, all we would have had to do to make the Shuttle more reliable was build more !

That's it. It wouldn't matter if we used the extra shuttles or not. They could just sit their gathering dust.

You're not judging their reliability on anything else.

Not mission count, not hours spent in space or even total cargo sent into space.

You cant " School " someone when you have no idea what the hell it is your talking about in the first place.
 
Fenton said:
Don't agree with the whole Shuttle thing. Sure we lost two, but during its heyday the launched a shuttle once a Month
Click to expand...
Not true, at the most it was 3-4 consecutive months of flights in the early 90's. But the fact that it needed 135 flights to do what 6 Saturn V flights could have done because its payload capacity was minuscule.

Without it, we couldn't have repaired and upgraded the Hubble.
Click to expand...
Another launch vehicle could have done the same thing.

It got to be such a regular thing that the American public quit paying attention.
Click to expand...
People got bored because they really werent doing anything other than putting stuff up. If Saturn V kept going we could have gone to Mars and people would have kept paying attention.

As far as Mars is concerned, I think its a massive waste of money.

We will never terraform Mars. Let Elon Musk try so we can have a good laugh and stop spending money on getting people to a dead planet.
Click to expand...
No one in this thread is saying we ought to terraform Mars...
 
beefheart said:
It failed in every single goal that was set for it, it killed 14 people, and it set back our manned space program and extendable launch vehicle program.

Boondoggle.
Click to expand...

So all the resupply missions to ISS and Mir were a failure ? Launching, Repairing and upgrading the Hubble a failure ?

Successfully flying 3 million pounds of cargo into Space, a failure ?

The numerous Skylab experiments a failure ?
 
PoS said:
Not true, at the most it was 3-4 consecutive months of flights in the early 90's. But the fact that it needed 135 flights to do what 6 Saturn V flights could have done because its payload capacity was minuscule.


Another launch vehicle could have done the same thing.


People got bored because they really werent doing anything other than putting stuff up. If Saturn V kept going we could have gone to Mars and people would have kept paying attention.


No one in this thread is saying we ought to terraform Mars...
Click to expand...

Elon Musk wants to terraform Mars.

Thousands people spent their entire professional carriers building and maintaining that program

I worked with quite a few of them. Ill take their expertise and judgment over yours and Musk's fan boy anyday.
 
Fenton said:
Hahaha !! Hilarious.

Using your ridiculous made up standard, all we would have had to do to make the Shuttle more reliable was build more !

That's it. It wouldn't matter if we used the extra shuttles or not. They could just sit their gathering dust.

You're not judging their reliability on anything else.

Not mission count, not hours spent in space or even total cargo sent into space.

You cant " School " someone when you have no idea what the hell it is your talking about in the first place.
Click to expand...

Fenton...seriously. Do you know that there was only 4 shuttles that were supposed to do all the work? We had to spend billions to build a 5th shuttle after Challenger exploded...then we lost Columbia, and bam....40% of the entire fleet was gone. It took a few years just to build Endeavor, and they had to find the money for that, which could have been spent elsewhere.

The entire program was sold to us on its reliability, well, it wasn't very reliable, was it? When you lose 2 out of 5 orbiters and have to take a few years off after you lose those orbiters....then you don't have reliability. The post Columbia flights all were locked into missions to the ISS (except one very dangerous mission to the HST). Each flight after Columbia had to undergo a rigorous set of costly protocols, and be examined by ISS astronauts.

Your knowledge of the space program is very very tiny, but, you pretend to know a lot...and you don't. And it really doesn't make you look particularly smart on this issue.

Criticism of the Space Shuttle program stems from claims that NASA's Shuttle program has failed to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues.[1] More specifically, it has failed in the goal of reducing the cost of space access. Space Shuttle incremental per-pound launch costs ultimately turned out to be considerably higher than those of expendable launchers:[2] by 2011, the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was estimated at $450 million,[3] or $18,000 per kilogram (approximately $8,000 per pound) to low Earth orbit (LEO). By comparison, Russian Proton expendable cargo launchers (Atlas V rocket counterpart), still largely based on the design that dates back to 1965, are said to cost as little as $110 million,[4] or around $5,000/kg (approximately $2,300 per pound) to LEO. When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or $60,000/kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO.[5] This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per pound of payload in 1972 dollars (approximately $657 per pound adjusting for inflation to 2013).[6]

It failed in the goal of achieving reliable access to space, partly due to multi-year interruptions in launches following Shuttle failures.[7] NASA budget pressures caused by the chronically high NASA Space Shuttle program costs have eliminated NASA manned space flight beyond low earth orbit since Apollo, and severely curtailed use of unmanned probes.[8] NASA's promotion of and reliance on the Shuttle slowed domestic commercial expendable launch vehicle (ELV) programs until after the 1986 Challenger disaster.[9]
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Fenton said:
So all the resupply missions to ISS and Mir were a failure ? Launching, Repairing and upgrading the Hubble a failure ?

Successfully flying 3 million pounds of cargo into Space, a failure ?

The numerous Skylab experiments a failure ?
Click to expand...

Skylab? You are really showing your ignorance here. Do you know how Skylab got into space? Saturn V, the three crews to Skylab were launched via Saturn IB.

You really need to learn things before commenting about them.

ISS gets resupplied all the time via Russian rockets, and via SpaceX Falcon 9, Orbital's Cygnus, and via the European Space Agency's ATV.

You are out of your league Fenton, quit while you are far far behind.
 
Fenton said:
Hahaha !! Hilarious.

Using your ridiculous made up standard, all we would have had to do to make the Shuttle more reliable was build more !
Click to expand...

Why would somebody continue down that path when 40% blew up?
 
beefheart said:
Fenton...seriously. Do you know that there was only 4 shuttles that were supposed to do all the work? We had to spend billions to build a 5th shuttle after Challenger exploded...then we lost Columbia, and bam....40% of the entire fleet was gone. It took a few years just to build Endeavor, and they had to find the money for that, which could have been spent elsewhere.

The entire program was sold to us on its reliability, well, it wasn't very reliable, was it? When you lose 2 out of 5 orbiters and have to take a few years off after you lose those orbiters....then you don't have reliability. The post Columbia flights all were locked into missions to the ISS (except one very dangerous mission to the HST). Each flight after Columbia had to undergo a rigorous set of costly protocols, and be examined by ISS astronauts.

Your knowledge of the space program is very very tiny, but, you pretend to know a lot...and you don't. And it really doesn't make you look particularly smart on this issue.
Click to expand...

Again, using your made up standard for " reliability " all we would have had to do would have been to build more

They could sit gathering dust and it would have made the program more " reliable ".

So we build 10, only use 5 and lose 2. Hey, we've doubled the entire programs reliability !

Lol !!

And the missions that flew Scientific instruments and cargo into low orbit were referred to as " Sky lab " mission's.

I didn't say we were docking with the Skylab that burned up entering earths atsmophere years ago
 
Fenton said:
Again, using your made up standard for " reliability " all we would have had to do would have been to build more

They could sit gathering dust and it would have made the program more " reliable ".

So we build 10, only use 5 and lose 2. Hey, we've doubled the entire programs reliability !

Lol !!

And the missions that flew Scientific instruments and cargo into low orbit were referred to as " Sky lab " mission's.

I didn't say we were docking with the Skylab that burned up entering earths atsmophere years ago
Click to expand...

What is made up about 40% of the fleet being destroyed? WE WERE NEVER GOING TO BUILD ANY MORE ORBITERS. And we certainly weren't going to keep killing astronauts. Why can't you understand simple things? We spent more money on the Shuttle than we would have ever spent using a more reliable rocket with many many more missions.

And, no, the missions that flew scientific instruments and cargo into low orbit were not referred to as " Sky lab " mission's. (sic)

The onboard lab flights the flew on the space shuttle were called "Spacelab" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacelab

Now, the last flight of Columbia was a "SpaceHab" flight, where the entire cargo bay was a manned laboratory.

You brought up Skylab in the context of talking about the space shuttle, you showed your ignorance, Skylab was launched and crewed with Saturn rockets (the already built rockets that were to be used on the cancelled Apollo 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20 missions) They used those rockets for Skylab and the Apollo Soyuz flight.

Keep posting things that are wrong and easily disproved, it is hilarious. (and keep spelling things wrong, it is hilarious)

You are out of your league Fenton.
 
Last edited:
Fenton said:
Again, using your made up standard for " reliability " all we would have had to do would have been to build more

They could sit gathering dust and it would have made the program more " reliable ".

So we build 10, only use 5 and lose 2. Hey, we've doubled the entire programs reliability !
Click to expand...

Well that is not what happened. So what do we do from here?
 
DA60 said:
Well, the Russians found out all anyone needed to know about living in zero gravity years before the ISS.

And we now know one thing clearly - human beings are not designed to live in zero gravity for long periods of time. All kinds of physical problems can result when humans are weightless for months/years.

If they go to Mars to live, I think they have got to find a way to make structures with artificial gravity when they get there.
Click to expand...


??? Are you saying Mars has no gravity? Not as much as earth but it does have gravity.
 
Fenton said:
Elon Musk wants to terraform Mars.

Thousands people spent their entire professional carriers building and maintaining that program

I worked with quite a few of them. Ill take their expertise and judgment over yours and Musk's fan boy anyday.
Click to expand...

Well Elon may want to terraform Mars but I never said I wanted to! Sheesh, this type of Sterling Archer double down is pretty silly- you do realize that character was written as a joke and not meant to be taken seriously I hope...
 
Luftwaffe said:
True, and then at some point America will have to begin to claim land on Mars. Start while we are ahead.

We could grant statehood or territorial recognition to the territories these companies and ultimately the American people set up.

Anyways, before I keep ranting, I should probably wait until we actually land people there and make it habitable.
Click to expand...

There's no air on mars and the sun is far weaker at that distance. We would have an easier time colonizing the moon.
 
PoS said:
Well Elon may want to terraform Mars but I never said I wanted to! Sheesh, this type of Sterling Archer double down is pretty silly- you do realize that character was written as a joke and not meant to be taken seriously I hope...
Click to expand...

I don't recall saying you wanted to Terreaform Mars.

I dont even recall responding to any of your post prior to the last one.

I'm pretty sure you just interjected your opinion into a conversation that didn't concern you.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom