Lunar mission to get the axe...
 

NASA's plans to go back to the moon to be put on ice...

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...,2770904.story

FBO :yeah:

more resources for science, technology, and education plz... not for the military/security

This from Gizmodo:

Reporting on a White House and NASA meeting last Wednesday, sources say that the President has decided to give NASA an additional $1 billion in 2011. The extra funding will serve to create a new, simpler heavy lift rocket, as well as to increase the fleet of satellites controlling Earth's land, oceans, and atmosphere.

The objective is to have the heavy rocket ready for a 2018 launch, while Europe, Japan, and Canada would develop a lunar lander and moon base modules with their own billions. While this may make some NASA fans sad—after the US single-handely arrived to the Moon—I'm convinced that the collaboration with other countries is the only way to move forward in manned space exploration.

It's the only way we can successfully colonize space.

Wow satellites controlling the atmosphere... :o well that solves gorbal warming doesent it? ;)

But seriously have you ever seen how much crap is already in orbit? Its a wonder stuff doesent crash into each other on a daily basis. :doh:

http://www.natural-environment.com/b...in-space-junk/

:-?

I have one thing to say, (expletive deleted) barack obama
ok, two things, the only way we are going to survive, as a species, is to be elsewhere when the earth has the next giant rock run into it, gamma ray burst from a nearby supernovae, I pass gas and light a match, ect. We only have so much time, once its gone, and there is a super disaster, wee're simply too specialized to put things back together, on a planet wide basis, if there is an event that leaves us with less then 5% of our current population, I mean, really, who knows how to make a generator, or how to refine hydrogen, or helium, or any of a million other things that our every day life is based on, to sum up this giant run-on sentence, if we dont get off this planet, we're doomed.

All things come to an end. All species will eventually become extinct. That is nature.

Sorry Obasma fans, I am officially a hater now :stare:

As if there haven't been enough rumors going around already, work is going to get pretty interesting once the budget is released on Monday. I'm surprised we haven't started getting the flood of emails from the higher-ups yet.

So, instead of spending government money to pay private companies to build space hardware, we're going to pay government money to private companies to build less space hardware, and hope some other countries step up to help us?

:o:o

As long as enough of us get off this planet, the species will survive. It's having all the eggs in one basket as we currently do that's the problem.

However, Mars as an alternate home isn't looking too attractive. Makes Antarctica look like Palm Beach.

Equine Scatology! Budget for those items is already more than NASA's budget.

Typical liberal solution "we just haven't thrown enough money at the problem'.

Double equine scatology! Wasn't that how the "space station" was supposed to be built? How many more billions did we have to pay Russia for their contribution, the Spectra Power Module?

I won't say hater, but I never believed this twit. Thank God (yeah, I said God, sue me!) I retired from the U.S. Military before this toad became the Commander in Chief.

The numbers are bad but the planet/junk size ratio in those pics is more then a bit misleading.. it would obscure the sun!

And I am not a fan of this either. In the Sixties a goal was set that seemed unreachable, but it was reached. No goals have been set since and we have just been spinnin around taking pics and leaving space junk.. time to move on! :D

:eek: The Sky is Falling. :roll:

hmm... yep, would have been nice to see a moon landing with modern stuff... (ex modern cameras, image quality, ect.)

This new president was a bad idea... like the old one... and probably the next... (they seem to just get dumber and dumber...)

Colonising space, somebody said. Wowh, that are very big words. Think again.

I love Science Fiction. I am fascinated by stellar conquest. And desoite my sympathy for that, I still know the difference between fiction, and reality.

If a nation and an economy and state finances and a society are in a condition like the American example, or the West in general, then going to the moon simply is nothing more than a feel-good project that is close to the principle of panem et circenses. Always wanting new toys to play around with, is one thing. Being able to finance them, is something different. And NASA - belongs to the biggest debtor on Earth.

To my surprise, ten days or two weeks ago I stumbled into a TV documentary on the ISS, and what stunned me is that now that it is almost ready and finished in construction - they have difficulties to get customers booking time onboard of it to conduct their experimental designs. From the perspective of ESA it is not sure that NASA even has any long-termed interest in keeping the station alive, even more so with the Shuttle approaching it's decommission date, and all solutions thought about to supply the station in prinicple are little more than provisional arrangements. There are more important things to think about than the moon. Getting a succeeding system for the shuttle, for example.

Hopping around on the moon may deliver nice pics to please the crowds at home and make them waving flags and voting for you - but it does little more than just that. And sending half a dozen people, or even a hundred people, to the moon, or Mars, hardly is "colonising space". You do not become a sailor by dipping your toe in the sand at the beach. It's religion for some people to believe we could solve our problems on Earth in space, but trying to do so would only mean to continue thinking we must not change, and would result in us bringing the same mental attitude that made us creating our problems on Earth to a small space camp out there. And then our problems sooner or later would beging again. Because we have not learned anything.

First we bring our house in order, if that is still possible. Then we start thinking about colonising space, if we are bored then. If we cannot bring our house in order, and cannot change our messy behaviours, then the questions must be asked whether we really deserve to reach the stars one day, and whether we really deserve to survive in the evolutionary process. The latter usually is taken for granted - but I reject the claimed naturalness of that assumption. And in the end the judge of that problem with our design will not be man, or man-made ethics and morals and imagined deities, but ol' mother nature who let's us live.

Or not.