New Mars Forums

I'm no oracle, but I think the russians are just looking for a revenue stream.

there betting that the US taxpayers are not going to let the ISS turn into another Skylab.

And hedging

That it will be 2006 before the shuttles fly and that congress (with help from president elect Kerry) will succeed in pushing the cev development off indefinately.

When exacly did this country stop will to take risks, and also  stopped looking at technological adancement as a national priority. Was it with Clinton , or before?

Mine too...

Like Kerry's lack of any real energy policy, outside of bio technology , which I have some issues with too, he doesn't seem to have any interest in anything high tech.

Yes its very important to fund social programs, but the money has to come from somewhere. You have to make money to give money.

What are the industries of the 21th century the US should be investing in.

Automobile, no not likely we are losing any lead we had there.
Electronics - we lost that lead a long time ago.

The us should be investing in high enerygy physics and yes space technology. Thats the only hope for any kind of energy independence.

Kerry however has no plans whatsoever to expand either, he wants to spend the money on "renewable" resouces coal and natual gas. (is that a democratic term, somehow I never considered coal a renewable resource, unless your talking gologic timeframes)

He visits nasa and doesn't even mention a word about the space program.

This whole thing is a joke, we spend all these monies  building a space station we can't even reach, and congress wants to delay any work on the cev even further. Between the dummies we put in congress and likely president Kerry we might as well just give up on tech entirely and become a third world country.

I'm not for the war in Iraq , and I don't like some of Bush's policies either... but I'm a realalist and I believe Kerry could make an even bigger mess of things...

Interesting isn't it, Nasa is sticking by the CAIB recommendations and congress is suggesting , well maybe Graham is wrong lets do this mission anyway.

Okeefe is beging chastized for the very actions he was expected to take under the CAIB. although I too want somekind of servicing mission to the Hubble I think congress is getting a taste of their own medicine.

I truely believe that a lot of blame for Columbia was put on NASA and the political (funding issues) aspects were played down.

I think the administrator wants them to force him fly this mission.
Some goals are worth the risks.

OR

And this is just comming out, maybe Nasa is counting on getting some emergency funding for a new teleoperations servicing approach. Okeefe brought that up today.
I think this story is far from over... I'm hoping the winner of this is going to be the Hubble.

Your talking about the house science committee? We have a better chance of finding intellegence on Mars than in that group.

When I need a good laugh I watch them on cspan. Best thing that could happen is if we could put all those bozo's on the unemployment line.

The bush space plan is being pushed out of proportion to what it is. Its a mission statement, mission statements are well known in the corporate world but non existant in politics and the governments. Its not heres a ton of money and this is what we are going to do.

Its more of here is what we are going to "try" to accomplish with the available resources and "what" we are not going to try to do.

After Columbia, Nasa needed just that, the most important piece is the redirection of funds from the ISS/LEO and towards a more focused abjective.

I wonder if the next shuttle launch would of been pushed back to 2005 if this plan wasn't proposed, if the ISS was the sole focus would there have been pressure on nasa to accelerate that schedule.

Like a company in chapter 11 reorg, nasa has been given some breathing room to restructure and make wise decisions. Some key events this month show that maybe there's some substance to the plan.

1) push back of the shuttle launch to 2005
2) conversations with the navy about joint development of the reactor for project jimo, they have much experience in that direction.
3) serious discussion about using Shutttle C to launch prometheus.

If your implying that Kerry would do any thing positive for the space program maybe there IS something empty headed headed around here.

Nasa tv is off until 10:30 pst

There was a time when both nasa tv and cspan would of covered this all night,, after all whats on this late, see why we need that bush initiative.

Why I'm waiting I'm in photoshop working on a photo I plan to post on my website sol3.typepad.com, headline is if Kerry wins: the picture is of a dog food bag , dems dogfood , specially fortified for young engineers.

(meaning engineering in this country needs a boast, a friend of mine was telling me that a person they know, just graduated with honors in engineering, and after several months with no job he found one as a waiter.... maybe an engineering job won't even buy you a bag of dog food soon... I will calculate pi for food)

Funny I've never been much of a republican before, but I think the Bush plan is the best shot we have at a desint space program. .. Now you can curse me....

Just head there's a 3:00 pm est news conference.

If thats the case, than they may be able to recover a lot of science from this mission, I think in wake of Columbia they are super cautious. I'm not in the know, but I suspect they are trying various scenarios on the similators before they even consider trying to break that reset loop.

Since they don't know whats causing the problem do that could do more harm... Those resets are there for a purpose , to protect the processor and integrity of the system.

The fact that the uhf is working means they eventually may be able to get pictures through the relays.

They probably will in the next few days try to get out of the reset, maybe upload code to tell the os to ignore the fault. We will see... A lot probably depends on what happens with opputunity.... This landing method seems to have worked twice so maybe we will have a second rover on mars by tommorrow morning.

In a novel I'm going to posting to my site soon, one of the stories involves a group of hackers called the darksiders , the hacker group which got of hand was originally formed when a mars rover operation goes bad, and in desparation a cash strapped space agency puts a processor simulator on the world wide web and promises anyone who can get pass the fault a million dollar prize.

Unfortuately I don't think Our goverment would ever do something like that , but it makes good fiction.
You can read about what I have planned on my site at sol3.typepad.com or chat about the spirit or opputunity missions on the message board. Yea I know this is just a selfish plug for my site... but....

Well I don't think I'll get thrown out, but I feel a little alone, but I'm a very opionated person. The discussion on Spirit right now is going pretty good., and I'm enjoying. Their were actually a few mars society folks who came to my defense in one post. Hey I'm new to this but I'm learning fast. I've been upset ever since the reaction to the Bush announcement, the Dems and the journalist aren't giving it chance. I've wiritten several who said the program would cost several trillion dollars... I asked them what cracker jack box they got that figure from. I blasted one Aussie newspaper from reporting yesterday that Nasa was abandoning Spirit. Seems like there is a good chance of recovering the mission. But I think manned missions though more expensive would have a better sucess rate. There was a discussion of that on space.com

I did get some story ideas however from the forum.... but I find their board hard to navigate .. I know newmars uses Ikonboard and I use InvisionBoard on my site , that infopop board they use isn't as nice.

Only if its several light years away and you have the means of getting there. :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:  :laugh:

I have a radical idea, lets start a "black List" of news media which do this movement injustice buy there inaccurate reporting.

SBs, some little Australian paper is already reporting Nasa will have to abandon Spirit soon because they don't have the time to deal with the problems with the Opputunity landing comming up. I agree it they may have to scale back on resources, (global surveyor, Mars Odessey) but I haven't seen anything from nasa to that effect.

What I have seen is a little more encouraging they seem to be leaning towards a software problem.

I think I will start a list of bad new source on my website sol3.typepad.com, what set me off is all the wild monetary figures flying about about the Bush Proposal, anywhere from 1 to 40 trillion dollars. It astounds me where there getting those figures.

Well all be eating dogfood because there won't be any enginneerig jobs... and people will wonder why, if this country doesn't invest in technology thats what will happen. Its not only space, do you see any big expenditures in physics etc,