[deep_eyes]

PAYING FOR NASA
Even Before Disaster, the Plan Was to Increase NASA Spending
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 — In his proposed budget for 2004, written well before the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated, President Bush said the shuttle program suffered "from inadequate planning and poor cost management." He asked Congress to increase spending for the shuttle to $3.97 billion, up from $3.2 billion this year.

Overall financing for NASA would increase, to $15.5 billion from $15 billion. The plan includes money for a broad range of programs, including studies of Jupiter's moons, climate research and developing technology that could make air travel safer.

Administration officials and members of Congress indicated that the proposal could change drastically after the shuttle disaster. The White House budget director, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., said the White House would be receptive "to new ideas that may come now."

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, the California Republican who has for six years been chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees NASA, said, "I would expect it to be revamped."

As proposed, the budget calls for $279 million for Project Prometheus, a program to develop nuclear power for spacecraft that could enable travel to distant planets, including Jupiter, and $31 million to begin building a high-speed optical communications system that could be used to explore Mars as early as 2009.

The budget also calls for increasing financing for the International Space Station, which has been plagued by cost overruns, to $1.7 billion, from an estimated $1.49 billion this year. A White House assessment of that program in the budget found that cost controls had improved, but said, "It is still too early to tell whether management reforms will continue to be successful."

AND:

NASA, often criticized as a middle-aged bureaucracy lacking a sense of purpose, has taken a modest step with its Project Prometheus, unveiled last week in President Bush's budget. A central objective is to spend $2 billion over the next five years to develop a high-velocity space propulsion system using small nuclear reactors. The new technology, NASA says, will significantly reduce the time of space travel and increase the vehicle's lifting power.

In its first use, the agency claims, nuclear power "will open the rest of the outer solar system to detailed exploration." Within a decade, a nuclear-powered unmanned spacecraft is to be sent to investigate the icy moons of Jupiter — Europa, Ganymede and Callisto — searching their subsurface oceans for possible evidence of life-related organic material. The prospect of nuclear-powered flight is likely to raise alarms from those worried about the spread of radiation in case of accidents on liftoff.

original article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/04/politics/04HBOX.html

discovered info about this from article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/09/weekinreview/09WILF.html

-----------------------------------

 Me thinks this is good start?

[an0n]

Can anyone say "the first half of 2010"?

[Corhellion]

Hmmm...When will they get the idea that building and launching ship in orbit or on the moon could be easier to manage

and safer for re-entry(R.I.P. Columbia crew ) like you take a crew shuttle up to the ship dock, then after the mission is done, the crew hops onto another crew shuttle that brings them back home. This would also give NASA the added advantage of building bigger ships without the draw back of gravity.(not the much gravity in space)

Just my opinion

Cor

[Anaz]

w00tw00tw00tw00tw00t!!!

More $$$s for NASA!

[deep_eyes]

Originally posted by Corhellion
Hmmm...When will they get the idea that building and launching ship in orbit or on the moon could be easier to manage

and safer for re-entry(R.I.P. Columbia crew ) like you take a crew shuttle up to the ship dock, then after the mission is done, the crew hops onto another crew shuttle that brings them back home. This would also give NASA the added advantage of building bigger ships without the draw back of gravity.(not the much gravity in space)

Just my opinion

Cor

good point and i was just reading up on something they are suppose to be working on to do just that for the international space station but the way NASA is, i doubt it would be used any time soon, cause it was suppose to be done by 2003.

but what you said about using these smaller shuttles, they can do the load work and have larger ships be built in space rather then on earth where it would be almost inpossible to launch safely without it bellyflopping.

hopefully if the technology gets better & the issues of the world  -things should be full swing and we could be making normal flights to and from the moon normalized and or even to mars (which in my opinion, if the space race still went on today we would be there man wise by now).

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]I wonder if anyone's made any more progress on the 'space elevator' plan? It was a plan to put a large body in orbit with a ultra strong cable running between it and the earth, it would have effectively tenthed the cost of raising a kilo of 'whatever' into orbit and would be significantly more safe on launch and re-entry than a conventional shuttle. I read about it quite a while back (a year or two ago), seemed pretty feasible in theory.
[/color]

[Knight Templar]

yes, but I can already see some angry **** flying a plane or misle into it.. that's a lot of length to defend

[Martinus]

Originally posted by Knight Templar
yes, but I can already see some angry **** flying a plane or misle into it.. that's a lot of length to defend

[color=66ff00]I think a nutter is going to pick a more populated target than a space elevator.[/color]

[deep_eyes]

Originally posted by Maeglamor


[color=66ff00]I think a nutter is going to pick a more populated target than a space elevator.[/color]

thinks to self if cord pops.... it could smackage the surface aggh!:eek:

but in all actuallity how would you do this? lower a long 30 mile cable to the surface from space? hel in animes its done in some space ones... like technoman.... hmm might be a good idea...

[Solatar]

Think of all the people trapped in space if it breaks. Think how expensive it would be to repair. Think of the people halfway up the elevator.

[CODEDOG ND]

hmm...

[Galemp]

Arthur C. Clarke envisioned that sort of thing. One huge ring space station, tethered with four or five elevator cables made from synthetic diamond. Cool stuff.

And w00t!  Nasa gets more money!

[NeoHunter]

Its great that NASA is going to get more money from the US government. Its about time something is done when you consider how little is done so far in terms of space travel.

I think the "space elevator" idea is a bad idea. There could be many external threats to it. Terrorism is one of them. Don't tell me that the terrorists like to bomb something or some place which is heavily populated.  Terrorist can hit anywhere.

There is something called human error. Some stupid pilot might accidentally fly right into the elevator and smash the whole thing apart. Then the government would have to come up with some more money to get it fixed. The odds of that happening are slim but when somthign can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Another thing that can go wrong is space debris and asteroids. Any of those hits that thing and the elevator is damaged.

For now, I think shuttles will have to do.

[LtNarol]

In my honest opinion, a tether system would be more dangerous to build and maintain than launching capsules strapped to rockets.  For one thing, how in the world are you going to keep a 30mile long pole, however wide, intact given earthquakes, weather conditions, and infinite human stupidity.  Not to mention the fact that it'd be perhaps the most tempting target for terrorism ever; knock the thing over and it'll tear itself through the better half of most smaller states (keep in mind that gravity will accelerate it, especially the far end, giving it enough velocity most likely to simulate an asteriod impact stretched out for 30 miles).  Its about as practical as launching nuclear powered vehicles from downtown .

Using a crew shuttle to return a crew from orbit doesn't solve anything either as if the heat protection goes, so does the ship; its the same thing as the shuttle.

A possible solution would be to create something of a survival pod; a separately sealed capsule within the shuttle (or similar vehicle) which is essentially just the cockpit with an old fashioned ablative heat shield around it and packed with a set of parachutes and some maneuvering thrusters to point it the right way.  The crew could seal the pod during liftoff and reintry so that in the event of a catastrophic failure to the rest of the shuttle, they'd atleast have a reasonable chance of survival.

[NeoHunter]

Or something called a "structual integrity field" like in Star Trek. Hahahaaha

Sorry.

[Bobboau]

ah, so the secret x303 is real after all...

[NeoHunter]

Hahaha...

P.S: Will somebody get that stupid error fixed?! The one that keeps popping out whenever I want to post something. So damn irritating. Lines 53 and 129.

[NegspectahDek]

Originally posted by LtNarol


A possible solution would be to create something of a survival pod; a separately sealed capsule within the shuttle (or similar vehicle) which is essentially just the cockpit with an old fashioned ablative heat shield around it and packed with a set of parachutes and some maneuvering thrusters to point it the right way.  The crew could seal the pod during liftoff and reintry so that in the event of a catastrophic failure to the rest of the shuttle, they'd atleast have a reasonable chance of survival.

An excellent idea, but the main drawback to this is weight.  Grafting a self contained escape pod into the structure of the shuttle would add an enourmous amount of weight to the orbiter.  And at $10,000 a pound, i doubt anyone would be willing to pay for it.

Either way, accidents like these are freak occurances anyways.  Theres only three instances where US astronauts have died in an accident:  Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia.  Out of 128 launches, only 2 failures?  I'd take those odds.

[Martinus]

Originally posted by LtNarol
In my honest opinion, a tether system would be more dangerous to build and maintain than launching capsules strapped to rockets.  For one thing, how in the world are you going to keep a 30mile long pole, however wide, intact given earthquakes, weather conditions, and infinite human stupidity.  Not to mention the fact that it'd be perhaps the most tempting target for terrorism ever; knock the thing over and it'll tear itself through the better half of most smaller states (keep in mind that gravity will accelerate it, especially the far end, giving it enough velocity most likely to simulate an asteriod impact stretched out for 30 miles).  Its about as practical as launching nuclear powered vehicles from downtown .

[color=66ff00]
The cable isn't rigid, it consists of some kinda ultra strong carbon 6 mesh. In any case I'm pretty sure that the NASA guys thought of many of the things that concern you guys given that the cable isn't actually all that wide if it did detach from the space end and it did fall to its maximum length it really isn't going to do a great deal of damage. Hitting a nuclear reactor would be a far more appropriate target.
[/color]

[wizz33]

if you want to know the current state of space thethers check
http://www.highliftsystems.com

especially the message board

they predict that tn about 3 til 5 years they can make a space elevator