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Ichabod! The glory HAS departed.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/2 … index.html
Am I reading this correctly?
Glenn says it's wrong to divert money away from the international space station
He supports the president's moon and Mars goals but not at the station's expense
You're joking, right? Apollo.
The country is not getting its money's worth out of the international space station, John Glenn said Tuesday...
I agree with him here. It's a worthless piece of junk (except for billionaires' holidays) and a drain on the taxpayer's wallet.
Diverting money from the orbiting research outpost to President Bush's goal of sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars is preventing some scientific experiments on the space station
You mean like sending SNAILS into weightlessness? Doing experiments on mould? Wow I'm SO thrilled.
He said he supports the president's moon and Mars goals but not at the expense of the space station, which is only two-thirds complete.
You MUST be joking, Mr. Glenn. Or perhaps you've gone the way of Charleton Heston?
Glenn, a Democrat who represented Ohio from 1975 to 1999, said the station shouldn't be abandoned, especially after costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
Billions of dollars of which could have a Mars colony established since 1980.
"We will not even begin to realize its potential," he said.
It's already seen its potential, Mr. Glenn: An orbiting hotel for billionaires.
I'd like to see its ultimate potential: A big flaming ball of metal screaming through the atmosphere and landing in the ocean. Not that I want to pollute the ocean, but it'd be great getting that huge ball and chain off the taxpayer's neck and getting on to Mars.
Never thought I'd live to see the day someone of Glenn's stature values the ISS over Moon/Mars, but what the heck...there's always astronomy. I'll just wait for the space exploration clods to get their act together once again (if ever).
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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I would have loved to have seen a brave push to put people on Mars but I also know that some of the plans people tried to sell us have been overly-optimistic and we would have seen more people killed.
Here's the problem, no matter how you run the numbers getting people on a trip to Mars is going to take time both going there, on the surface and the return trip, it will also require a large vessel and lots of supplies.
It means our men and women in space will have to survive a long time before they get to the red planet, and so far we have little experience in using a fully functional, self sufficient station.
We may be talking about a 2-1/2-year trip to Mars, including six months of travel time each way. Which means having the crew live in something similar to a space station while making the Mars trip, so far there have been every few stations that really *worked*. Perhaps Skylab or MIR (even the old Russian station was antique it did host some of the longest duration space flights)
ISS should have been a wonderful test bed for long duration missions, sadly it is de-evolving into an expensive international waste.
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It never was, nor ever would be an efficient test bed for a Mars ship.
If you want to test out equipment for a Mars ship... build a prototype!
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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It never was, nor ever would be an efficient test bed for a Mars ship.
If you want to test out equipment for a Mars ship... build a prototype!
Thankfully ISS exists, it is the only way to research the effects of long duration human spaceflight right now, there is no other vehicle. It will be a long time before a prototype Mars vehicle is built, the research needs to continue right now, not wait. The design of such a ship may well be determined by the results of this research.
[color=darkred]Let's go to Mars and far beyond - triple NASA's budget ![/color] [url=irc://freenode#space] #space channel !! [/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/c1cl0ps] - videos !!![/url]
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There is a lot of things we could do to discover what the long term effects of low gravity is on mammals. It is perfectly feasible to develop an orbiting satelite where we can study generations of mice as they live and propogate under zero, Lunar and Mars gravity to see what the long term effects are.
And we can do it a reasonable cost.
Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.
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There is a lot of things we could do to discover what the long term effects of low gravity is on mammals. It is perfectly feasible to develop an orbiting satelite where we can study generations of mice as they live and propogate under zero, Lunar and Mars gravity to see what the long term effects are.
And we can do it a reasonable cost.
There is a project to do that called Mars Gravity Biosatellite However humans are not mice, and it would be foolish indeed to rely on studies of mice or on any other non human mammals as the basis for the effects of long duration space missions on people. People have to be capable of performing complex tasks and working in a team after long voyages, there's no way to assess that using animal studies.
[color=darkred]Let's go to Mars and far beyond - triple NASA's budget ![/color] [url=irc://freenode#space] #space channel !! [/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/c1cl0ps] - videos !!![/url]
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http://www.space.com/imageoftheday/imag … 70221.html
45 years of Americans in orbit
(Coincidentally includes a photo of Glenn himself).
As if that is such a wonderful and laudable accomplishment [on the contrary, considering what we could have achieved BY NOW this is a flat-out laughable disgrace. Literally going round and round in circles -- like a dog chasing its tail -- is the best we can do, huh?].
As if Apollo never existed.
And likely it'll be another 45 years of us just being in orbit (around Earth).
Whoopie ding-dong bells! :evil:
We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...
--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)
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Had posted this the day before the opening of this new thread under the ISS mars weos with no comment at the time had relly not given it much ado since it came from the old war horses mouth. He has not been an astronaut for a long time.
The country is not getting its money’s worth out of the international space station, John Glenn said Tuesday, the 45th anniversary of the day he became the first American to orbit the Earth.
Diverting money from the orbiting research outpost to President Bush’s goal of sending astronauts back to the moon and eventually on to Mars is preventing some scientific experiments on the space station,
He definetely has some wires crossed. Right now deverting money from science research on board the ISS most of which has little near term benifit is what is needed.
I would agree that we are not getting our monies worth from ISS if all we ever do is science.
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He definetely has some wires crossed. Right now deverting money from science research on board the ISS most of which has little near term benifit is what is needed.
I would agree that we are not getting our monies worth from ISS if all we ever do is science.
Yep, well he is 85 years old. ISS only has 3 crew, they do some research but almost all their time is used in maintenance and continuing assembly. Even with a lot more money they don't have time to do substantial research until the full 6 crew are on board in Jan 2009. By then the new ESA, Japanese and Russian research labs will be attached. ISS has cost so much and it's a unique facility, it would be crazy to abandon it just when it's about to become fully operational.
[color=darkred]Let's go to Mars and far beyond - triple NASA's budget ![/color] [url=irc://freenode#space] #space channel !! [/url] [url=http://www.youtube.com/user/c1cl0ps] - videos !!![/url]
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I always find it interesting to read the comments of others as they without most always echo the sentements that we have in many of our own threads.
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