The DOD’s DARPA doesn’t have nearly as many people and establishments competing against private industry, so its prizes are adequate, winnable and have actually been won:
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge
What does NASA offer us for $16 billion a year? Exploration! Noone else has the vision and NASA is the only place where you get the ability and a significant amount of the money required for exploring our nearest solar neighbours. So quit it with the NASA bashing and go back under your rock. Anyone who thinks we shouldn’t be funding some way to get ourselves into space and off this God-forsaken rock has their head firmly implanted in their rectum.
First off, the prizes aren’t offered reluctantly, second they are winnable (ref: Astronaut Glove Challenge). Look what the X-Prize did for sub-orbital tourism. Not much yet, but in 2 or 3 years we’ll see the benefit. Much more than welfare or social security, which both encourage people to be lazy and not think about the future. Not to mention suck more and more of the federal budget every year leaving less and less money for useful programs like NASA.
Go read Dr. Robert Zubrin’s book “The Case for Mars” and then tell me that these prizes are a bad idea.
Also ping to Kevin and Civ for the lists.
And I apologize for being so abrasive, but this is a sore subject for me.
The Gov’t has no interest in developing outer space and since the UN Outer Space Treaty is in force will not allow private interests to develop outer space. Outer space will remain undeveloped forever.
Translation: "I Quit! It's too hard."
11 pounds per minute; one horsepower is 33,000 pounds per minute; 11/330=.0302HP; one horsepower is also equal to 746 watts; 30/746=.0402; sounds barely plausible to just move it, let alone collect it.
Short answer?
The civilizations that lead on the frontier, end up dictating the course of human history.
Long answer?.....
I have posted most of this before. Time to do it again.
Lil ol NASA is way way down there on where our money gets spent. Entitlements is what you should be upset about. This chart shows how small NASA spending is...........
NASA enables astronauts to bring back the visions of space, they bring back what its like to see our earth as an outsider. They bring back what its like to be a child of earth. To see our world as it truly is, an oasis in a vast black expanse.
They take human presence beyond our world. They teach us that the sky is not the limit, that there ARE no limits.
They keep an American/western world presence in space. If we dont. Someone else will most certainly take the lead. China is seeking the high ground now.
There are reasons why this nation is where it is today. Reasons why any of us are here at all. Brave people took the risks and went beyond the horizon. They did so on ships they knew may not return and on imperfect wings.
"A ship in harbor is safe -- but that is not what ships are built for." -John A. Shedd
The oceans are littered with vessels of discovery.
Astronaut Story Musgrave.....
"We have been a frontier culture. We were born out of exploration, we were born out of adventure. We were born out of the plains and the mountains. We've been a very physical kind of culture. And so, if you look at adventure, if you look at exploration, if you look at immersion in nature, a physical culture, and all those things, you can see directly how space flight relates to the way America has been born and how it evolved."
"You have to keep pushing the frontier not just because it's there, but because that's how we find things that end up changing humanity," -Paul Hill, Mission Control
Why Space, Why Explore? Astronaut Story Musgrave...........
We have no choice, Sir. It is the Nature of Humanity, it is the Nature of Life
The Globe was created and Life Evolved, and you look at every single cubic millimeter on this Earth, You can go 30,000 feet down below the Earth surface, You can go 40,000 feet up in the air and Life is There. When you look at the globe down there, you see Teeming Life Everywhere
It is the Power of Life, And maybe I am not just a Human up here, you know. Now Life is Leaping off the Planet. It is heading to other parts of the Solar System, other parts of the Universe
There are those kinds of Pressures. It isn't simply politics, it is not simply technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it is sort of also, you could look at it as maybe the Essence of Life. I think Teilhard de Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those kind of Forces are at Work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and to Push On
Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is a penalty, there is a down side, but Exploration and Pioneering, I think those are the critical things, it is the Essence of what Human Beings are, and that is to try to understand their Universe and to try to participate in the entire Universe and not just their little Neighborhood -Story Musgrave
One of my most convincing arguments for space exploration is the analogy that Earth itself is a spacecraft. Everything we learn about how to function and live in space applies directly to our spacehip Earth. How to recycle air, water, how to generate and use power efficiently, how to grow food in closed ecosystems. All of it is important. All of this can benefit mankind in a world with a fast growing population. Understanding other worlds is how we understand OUR world better, to understand how it formed and where it is going. Its our only home for now.
"We must not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began, and to know it for the first time." T.S. Eliot
Gallup survey.....
"More than three-fourths (77%) of the American public say they support a newplan for space exploration that would include a stepping-stone approach to returnthe space shuttle to flight, complete assembly of the space station, build areplacement for the shuttle, go back to the Moon and then on to Mars and beyond"
Q: Why should America send astronauts to Mars?
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin ........
A: I can give you a bunch of different answers that matter to me. But why did Spain bankroll Magellan to leave port with five ships and head out around the world, two of which never made it past the Canary Islands and two more of which were lost on the way? They got one ship back three years later with something like 20 or so people out of an initial crew of 122 across all the ships. Why'd they do that? It is in the nature of humans to find, to define, to explore and to push back the frontier. And in our time, the frontier is space and will be for a very long time.
Give me a counter example to the statement I'm about to make. When the history books are written, the nations that are preeminent in their time are those nations that dominate the frontiers of their time. The failed societies are the ones that pull back from the frontier. I want our society, America, western society, to be preeminent in the world of the future and I want us not to be a failed society. And the way to do that, universally so, is to push the frontier.
Now we don't do that with every dollar we've got. Obviously, most of our money has to be spent on today's concerns. But we're talking about something here that uses six tenths of a percent of the federal budget. This is not exactly spending money like a drunken sailor. This is an investment for our grandchildren's grandchildren.
I could make a very good argument on the basis of economics, that the European investment in the New World didn't pay off, really, for Europeans for 400 years. I could make an argument for you that the biggest payoff of European investment in the New World was the existence of America to bail them out of World War 2. Europe would have sunk into a dark age in the 20th century with the set of political activities and behaviors that led to World War 1 and then World War 2, which followed from that. Without the investment in the New World, there would not have been another society elsewhere on the planet to prevent Europe from falling back into a second dark age. And I could make an argument that European investment in the New World was a net loss for hundreds of years and finally was worth the effort.
These kinds of activities, as I say, they're not large in the grand scheme of things, although it looks large when you write down the budget numbers, and they don't pay off today. They pay off for our grandchildren's grandchildren. And I care about that and I think everyone else should, too. -NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
A note was found from the Challenger commander in his breifcase after the accident... Excerpted from Silver Linings : Triumph of the Challenger 7. by June Scobee Rodgers and June Scobee Rogers.
"We have whole planets to explore, we have new worlds to build. We have a solar system to roam in. And if only a tiny fraction of the human race reaches out toward space, the work they do there will totally change the lives of all the billions of humans who remain on earth, just as the strivings of a handful of colonists in the new world totally changed the lives of everyone in Europe, Asia & Africa."
Had Dick left the note in his briefcase for us to find if something happened? Did he write it on scratch paper to use to quote in a speech? All we'll ever know is that when we most needed a message, it was there. He left for us his dream for the world, his vision for space exploration."
The civilizations that lead on the frontier, end up dictating the course of human history.
And that work continues. New designs are being worked on and tests are beginning now. This... is what is next for NASA.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vZ8RIcmWAk
Lunar helium 3 may end up powering fusion reactors on earth someday. You never know what is going to matter and change the world.
We learned of lunar helium 3 because of our exploration efforts there.
We must push forward, challenge and improve and yes sometimes manage risk. Always.
Even as individuals. And we all know what it means when we do not do these efforts. It is no different as a nation or a species.
Please consider the above. Consider the grand picture. America, as a nation, and yes THROUGH our government just as our militarys are, must engage in exploration. It is as strategic and endeavour as they come.
330 pounds of lunar soil in less than 30 minutes...[in order to win a $250,000 NASA prize]. The strict parameters -- machines also could use only 30 watts of power and had to weigh less than 88 pounds.Hmm. Sounds like a job for a twelve year old kid in a space suit.
Excavation Possibilities!