Posted on 06/03/2005 7:07:02 PM PDT by Righty_McRight
Oh, please. Why not just get rid of borders? That way we won't have to fight over them...
I don't care whether they stay away from Uranus as long as they stay away from mine.
I agree. Exactly.
"..........Barney Frank has volunteered to go to Uranus."
Thanks for the best laugh I'll have all day!!!!!!
Look around your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country.
Just because no one put a line on the map does not mean the borders are not there, and people fight over them every day (from warfare to lawsuits) in order to secure their economies, their things, their way of life, good or bad, in order to feel secure.
Borders just happen to be where we go from feeling comfortable to where we do not, or are the 'fence' we look over to see greener pastures.
My remarks were the last line. Make of that what you will.
One lesson of history is that the country, culture, or other social entity, which ceases to guard its borders either physically or philosophically, will be overrun, enslaved, slaughtered, or assimilated.
I never said we wouldn't learn anything from the JUNO mission. Only that it doesn't advance the stated goal of putting a permanent human presence on the Moon and Mars.
I grew up during the Appollo program and like many kids of that era developed a fascination with the possibilities of human space flight. What I've seen since then however, is a lack of focus and an acceptance of doing little things, like going round and round the globe in space shuttles. Now obviously some science was learned on those missions but you simply can't argue that it was, outside of maybe the first few missions, the type of program that inspires people as the Appollo did.
That's all I'm asking for:focus on missions and goals that are worthy of the taxpayer dollars spent on them. I'm sure that it'll be interesting to lean about the Jovian magnetosphere,its weather and what the planet's core is like but c'mon, who outside of a small clique of scientists will it mean much to.
It's time for NASA to return to it's roots and be BOLD. Do missions that will inspire and fascinate us and more importantly the kids who will be the next generation's scientists.
I completely agree with you on the supercollider. Like you said, it at least had the possibility of uncovering new technology that was missed when the program was defunded.
But for the life of me, I can't figure out how an expanded knowledge of the Jovian magnetosphere or its weather will serve to advance anything of a practical nature or get us closer to our goals of lunar and Martian manned missions.
Look, we've screwed around for 30 years with baby steps like the shuttle program and the ISP when in the early 70s many invisioned a manned Mars mission by 1985. So we've lost 20 years because of a combination of timidity on NASA's party and short-sightedness on the part of politicians. It's time to get over that timidity and return to our "roots" as explorers.
Lack of money is not the problem with defending our borders. It is a lack of will or, worse, willful intent not to enforce our laws.
Ditto...
Neville72 you are absolutely correct.
FWIW, we were competing against a lunar sample return mission. However, the aim of the New Frontiers program is outer planets science, not lunar science, so I'm sure that helped.
The whole point of this mission is to go back and answer some of the questions that came up during Galileo. As a polar orbiting probe, JUNO will see all of Jupiter's surface over the course of a year or so. Jupiter is the largest and some would argue most important planet in the solar system. If you figure out Jupiter, you figure out a lot about the rest of the solar system.
Us at SwRI are going to be real busy between JUNO, MMX, IBEX, LAMP, and RAD. Lotsa work in the next few years.
MikeD, counting down the days until New Horizons launches
It's my understanding that this mission is a precursor to a Europa mission. The radiation environment near Europa is very harsh. JUNO is designed to operate in that environment for about six hours at a time during every orbit. A full-time mission to Europa is that much harder to design, build, test, and fly than something like this.
Trust me, the Moon and Mars are not ignored. NASA is sending probes to Mars every 2 years or so, when the orbits line up for best insertion. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is designed to look for water on the Moon & survey possible landing sites.
Coincidentally, the UV spectrometer on JUNO is based on the ALICE series of spectrographs we build at SwRI. A clone of P-ALICE for New Horizons is flying on LRO, so you can argue that some of the flight heritage of the LRO mission goes into flying JUNO.
It is spent right here on earth to pay salaries, research, development, and equipment.
Count me among those whose salaries are paid via NASA grants. Of course, if the grants dry up, I suppose I'll have to do something else...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.