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When the conquistadores arrived in the Americas, they often burned their ships to give their men the motivation to colonize and thrive. I think that is a good analogy for retiring the space shuttle.
Assuming that President Bush gets a second term and adheres to his plan, the shuttle retirement plan will be in full swing by the time a new administration takes over in 2009. At that point, it will be almost impossible for the new president to save it.
With the shuttle retired, the only two choices are sticking with the plan or simply ending manned spaceflight. With the second option exiled to the realm of political stupidity, the president and congress of 2009 will have no choice but to continue onward and upward.
Who needs Michael Griffin when you can have Peter Griffin? Catch "Family Guy" Sunday nights on FOX.
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nice, I can't remember what i'd like to say at this moment . . . .
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The very politically worded speech done with little extra cash in the short run definitly helps it's chances to goto fruitation.
I don't see the any big need to not be able to fork over a billions dollars over 5 years.
Also.. once the F-22 and F-35 procurement is done, the military budget will go down a touch. Especially once we are not so involved in the Middle East. I predict this to be around 2008-2009.
So, we may have a few extra billion a year to throw around.
It also may not be a bad Idea to set a contract to buy into Soyuz modules, just to ensure we have access to space..
Just a thought.
We are only limited by our Will and our Imagination.
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It also may not be a bad Idea to set a contract to buy into Soyuz modules, just to ensure we have access to space..
That's not an option, currently.
Russia did some stupid thing like selling nuclear science or hardware to Iran, and now it is forbidden (in the USA) to do business by buying Soyuzes.
The last Soyuzes were either purely Russian funded or ESA-Russia, not a dime from America, wich is kinda weir, given he fact Soyuz is today the only means to get people to ISS.
Hope they get some kind of agreement, soon...
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It's not that we need a few extra billion, we need to focus our resources. It looks like nasa will be 90% moon-mars oriented, and for now, that is a good thing.
Once the goal of spacestations and a earth-LEO reusable vehicle were met, we lost focus and started doing a shopping list of experiments. Some are and will be very important, others probably have generated some useless info. Some that now appear useless my be studied futher on paper and value will be gleaned from it, which gives the eggheads something to do while NASA focuses on the more practical engineering aspects of getting to the moon.
Then once we get there, the laundry list of experiments and PR stunts will start popping up again, but then the next goal will kick in, mars, hopefully short circuiting the politicisation of experimental time and resources.
Societies and organizations do better with clear goals. We stagnate and end up navel gazing when the goals get too esoteric.
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a very old topic from 20 years ago
same vehicles also support a base
an old topic with Mars-Direct talk and direct colonization plan, a sustained human colony and new frontier Attitudes
already a 'Study' faster, cheaper, and better than the standard NASA plan way back in 1991
SpaceX Starship will be 500 feet tall to prepare for Mars missions, Elon Musk says
https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-5 … -elon-musk
China building 20-storey nuclear space engine to power mission to Mars…with boffins ordered to ‘innovate or DIE’
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/26792968/ … gine-mars/
Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-04-14 02:53:14)
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