New Mars Forums

I, Claudius

Lots of backstabbing and political intrigue surrounding the life of the emperor Claudius. Excellent read...

I found this free space simulator online and thought some of you might be interested. It is an open source program, so you can edit it to your needs (even create spacecraft for those of you who are 3D modeling buffs) as long as you know some programming. So anyway, take a look at it. I think you'll be suprised at the quality of this free program.

Orbiter: The Free Space Sim

There'd be an awful lot of noise to filter out. But would they want to? It'd be easier to use a less noisy EM band.

Actually Seth, the military is to blame for our lack of large boosters. If they had had their way in the 1950s, we would only have rockets that are ICBM variants (actually for the most part that is exactly what happened). The reason that ESA and Russia hold 2/3 of the space launch industry is that their governments were able to recognize the need for large boosters. In fact, IMHO, the very reason we are stuck in a go nowhere space program is this military intervention to refuse anything that cannot be used as a weapons platform (the russians did the same thing, but lucky for them their military wanted rather large warheads). Our boosters, which the military has graced us with, are far below par on the global market and are part of the reason for the collapse of America's space program.

There are a pair of op-ed arcticles at SpaceDaily.com talking about this very subject. The second one also examines the actions of Gen. Medaris that helped pervent the military from from totally keeping us out of the space race.

Part 1

Part 2

Quote (or at least as close as I can remember it) from a WGN broadcast I happened to catch while flipping through the channels.

"After analyzing these latest tapes from Al-Queda, government sources belive that they still hate America..."

I almost wet my pants after hearing this. Is Al-Queda supposed to love us now because we keep droping 1000 lb "hugs" on them, and putting them up in wonderful "bead and breakfasts" in Cuba?

Like is said before, United States of Adolescents (no offense to the intelligent adolescents out there, but I couldn't think of another word for immaturity that begins with an A at the moment. If you have a better one, please PM it to me.  ).

I'd think I'd better get out my trusty Rod of Ignorance (read baseball bat) and get to work in Chicago...

Did anyone catch the episode of NOW on PBS about 2 weeks ago featuring "Chuck" Spiney? For those of you who didn't, he is a retired Pentagon staffer from the Office of Program Analysis and Evaluation (they judge who should get how much money for projects and whether it is worth it). Anyway, he posited a very interesting point: to provide a better defence, we must cut the defence budget. His analyses over that past 30 or years have consitantly pointed to this fact, using Pentagon studies and findings to support this case. By eliminating useless "congressional pork" programs, enforcing GAO auditing standards for the Pentagon (they currently, and illegally, claim exeption from this process), and requiring new systems to actually be tested before purchase and proven before deployment, we can save more American lives while at the same time saving tax payers money and providing a better defence.

Just how much could we save while still improving defense? Earl Ravenal, a Distinguished Research Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University, estimates that only a budget of $125 billion would be more than sufficient to meet our defense needs. This is a drastic difference from the bloated budget of nearly $400 billion for a Defense Department that, even with all of this money, has a hard time effectively protecting the U.S. and its interests.

My recommendation is that if we wish to pursue an actual space program, which the U.S. has not had since the 70s, we draw the funding from the ever fattening military-industrial-congressional complex. At the same time we can spend money on other much needed programs (i.e. Education, which goes hand in hand with space exploration) without drawing from some other programs nessecary funding. Imagine what a space progam backed with an extra, lets say for example, $20 billion annually.

No longer would we need to justify the "what about the problems hear on earth" nonsense espoused by the general public. The money would not be from an increase in taxes, cutting the budget of health, education, etc., or drop us further into debt. We have more than enough funding (~$250 billion per year) to put humans on the Moon, Mars, and wherever else we choose to go in less than a decade (production wise, never mind travel time). At the same time we can have a Defense Department that works if only we can learn to tame the military-industrial-congressional beast.

NOW Interview With Spiney

Spiney's own site

Center for Defense Information

"Kill Defense Pork" - Cato Institute

Has anyone seen the director's cut of Amadeus (released last fall I think)? There were a couple of scenes added to the movie that made a couple of points a little more interesting, but the original movie was a picture of perfection in its own right. If you have never seen it, unless you are one of those shallow morons of the heard who are unable to enjoy real art, I highly reccomend that you see this film. More so if you are a Mozart fanatic (the entire soundtrack is his music, unaltered) or just classical music fan in general. Of all of the movies I have ever seen, this is by far the best.

It's too bad that Hollywood doesn't make films like this anymore. But alas, we are relegated to the shallow bread and circuses that they provide us.

The decadance in modern film, IMHO, is a very good indicator of the decadance of modern society.

Judson
20 years old
Daytona Beach, FL (School)/Cheyenne, WY (Home)

I live off summer jobs and my AFROTC scholarship. Thank you taxpayers!

I am a fourth year Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics) student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. I graduate/commission in Dec. 2004 (and I can't wait!).

If anyone here is in Developmental Engineering in the military (especially AF), I'd like to hear from you about what the job is like.

LOL! 

Great site!

Oppressed Peoples of Judtopia

Thanks to the polititians getting their dirty little fingers in the pie from the get-go (i.e. using solid rocket boosters instead of the safer, slighty more costly, but more reusable liquid boosters), the Shuttle should have been replaced before it left the drawing board.  While there have been many great deeds performed by the shuttle, I feel the it has been the bane of space flight. It's astronomical (Space Shuttle is a partial reason for that slang terminology) costs have hindered the progress of spaceflight for decades by drawing precious money away from other vehicles.  Also by "putting all our eggs in one basket" any time we have a problem, Challenger and Columbia, manned spaceflight is held up for unreasonable amounts of time, ever drawing out our eventual move into the cosmos.

But you can't blame it on the politicians (I think it was done on purpose, but who knows), so lets blame it on the engineers!  "They were to ambitious."  "They should have used proven technology."  etc, etc, etc...

It reminds me of Vietnam (coincidental that it happened in nearly the same time frame), politicians trying to do the military's job.  We all know how that ended.  Now we are beginning to see the results of their mucking in the space program. 

If we are to replace the shuttle (Oh, please God do!), then we must keep Washington politics (read greed) out of NASA's hair.  :angry:

In this months issue of Discover magazine, there is an article on manned voyages to nearby star systems.  One of the primary sections is on long term life support and its recent developments.  Apparently, NASA is preparring a module (lab?) to test out a self contained atmosphere recycler.  I know tests have been done here on Earth using plants to regenerate oxygen for the crew.  I'm surprised that this has not been tried before on a the ISS or STS, but i suppose such and experiment would have been far too costly.

Anyway, check out the article.  It is nice to see people at NASA thinking big about near tearm activities, and bringing their ideas into the public spot-light (well sort of a spot-light anyway).

How about we name them after our great and foresighted political leaders that have helped us advance towards the colonization of space.  Wait...What is that you say?  The politicians have set us back decades?  Never mind then, I withdraw my proposal.

:angry: