REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

The Last Shuttle Ride

POSTED BY: CATPIRATE
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 2, 2012 14:20
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Friday, April 27, 2012 5:13 AM

CATPIRATE


It's over, The US is no longer in the space buisness. We have to go to the Russians to fly on their rockets to our space station. They have national pride back again knowing that. Watching RT television news last year they couldn't understand why America has dropped out. We have laid off NASA to the point we will never catch up again. No matter what astronauts say on David Letterman it's over. We have lost our technology edge. Thanks Obama. What an idiot. Did Spain or Columbus worry about the poe people, no. They continued to explore. We have an administration that can't cut it in the world.

First the shuttle was not the right choice to begin with on projects. A cheap version like the B1 bomber thanks Jimmy. Also the last shuttle crash could have been avoided. The heat shields are simple patch repairs but they didn't have mechanics on board to fix it. Just a composite tile repair. But why we kept it like the B1 today is for prestige. We with the help of the H1B visa has kept our edge. We need a space service to bring new technology to us. Our education system sucks so bad we don't graduate engineers on the level of other countries. Thanks for the genius visa. But now India and China will rule space. Obama is just out of touch. Not to mention we lost a stealth to the country which has the highest grads of electrical engineering. Now we lose a global hawk to Iran. Well someone hacked into it. Dark days ahead for America. But glad the "O" worries about the final four.

The shuttle's new home will be near Hell's Kitchen in NY City. The USS Intrepid is a really good Air, Space, and Sea museum. Not to far a walk from Time's Square.

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Friday, April 27, 2012 6:32 AM

CAVETROLL


Watching the remains of our space program ride around on the back of a plane designed in 1969 does not exactly fill me with national pride.

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Friday, April 27, 2012 7:28 AM

PIZMOBEACH

... fully loaded, safety off...


Quote:

Originally posted by CaveTroll:
Watching the remains of our space program ride around on the back of a plane designed in 1969 does not exactly fill me with national pride.



It does feel like we quit. If I could look around and see something else in it's place, like the greatest health care system on the planet, net zero energy policy with no dependance elsewhere, or a thriving economy I wouldn't feel as bummed. Instead, I think all we got was Iraq/Afghanistan.

Scifi movie music + Firefly dialogue clips, 24 hours a day - http://www.scifiradio.com

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Friday, April 27, 2012 8:36 AM

HERO


Obama 2012: "We choose not to go to the moon in our time...because its too hard. Instead we will design huge wind mills to propel our space vehicles and I'm proud to announce a billion dollar loan to WindyshipsBlow, Inc. to help them make America the leader in wind powered space ships."

Obama 2013 (if reelected): "We understand the loan to WindyshipsBlow, Inc. did not prevent the company's bankruptsy, but we saved or created at least ten jobs in the process. And we must not back off our commitment to green jobs otherwise China will build the world's wind powered spaceships. That's why we have decided to double our other commitments to this industry...groundbreaking American companies like HeyThatSpaceshipHasAWindMillOnTop Aerospace, YouKnowThisWontFly, Inc., and Flushing Down the Toilet Enterprises. Together with these companies we will make America the leader in giving money to companies that produce nothing but bankruptsy and Democratic Campaign Contributions...I mean...er...Green Jobs...because in space everything is green. Here, let me sing...Take me out into the green, golly folks wont that be keen, burn the cash and bundle the contributions...you can't take the truth from me..."

H


Hero...must be right on all of this. ALL of the rest of us are wrong. Chrisisall, 2012

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Friday, April 27, 2012 11:29 AM

CLJOHNSTON108


Kinda pissed that NASA-TV didn't even cover the flight this morning.
Thankfully, we live in an age of HD cameras in everybody's pocket!
This little clip is my favorite one of the whole day...


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Friday, April 27, 2012 11:55 AM

CATPIRATE


LOL Hero that is rich, my ribs are hurting now. Well why don't we switch over from high gear with the military industrial complex to a space program that is cutting edge. In the 50s the US Army wanted a moon base by 1980. What happen to all those ideas. Now we have a video game society with toy trucks on Mars. The shuttle was never nothing new. For me it was a Nazi rocket fighter shot into the air from a rail. It just used a modified 747. Interesting in 1978 but didn't have the WOW factor. Mars is where we should head. If the Vikings could live in Greenland we can on Mars. Out of India, China, and Brazil. I think India is well on track. ESA don't impress me.

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Friday, April 27, 2012 1:50 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!


Quote:

Originally posted by CaveTroll:
Watching the remains of our space program ride around on the back of a plane designed in 1969 does not exactly fill me with national pride.



All lamenting the demise aside, a change had to come. Poor - really damn poor - planning , it seems , has brought us to this point.



" We're all just folk. " - Mal

" AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall

"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein


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Friday, April 27, 2012 2:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


How could we afford to try for space today, at least on a NASA scale, in this economy?

If half of the 5 Trillion debt in the last 4 years were designated to space exploration, we'd have already found an inhabitable planet with a primitive civilization we could exploit and keep the good times rolling for at least another 20 years.

America is going to fall. At first, it was because we were all so pompous because of our public school brainwashing that we're the BEST NO MATTER WHAT. Now the schools are telling us that we're not the best, and it's just the next step in the same slippery slope.

I wipe my ass with the American dollar. It's kind of fitting, since there are, at any given moment, more "theoretical" USD's out there than there are sheets of toilet paper in the country. Your dollars in your wallet, eons ago, were backed by gold. Then they were backed by silver. These days, they're only backed by theoretical 1's and 0's. They're not even close to being backed up on the paper they're printed on....




This is really a big deal....

Saying we're done with space exploration and wishing good luck to other countries about it.

That means that WE as a NATION have FAILED in EPIC proportions!!!!



There has been nothing we've done since 2000 that we as a nation can take pride in, and it's only gotten exponentially worse each presidential term.

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Friday, April 27, 2012 3:54 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...


What a bunch of creeps, with a couple of possible exceptions. From what I have heard and read, our forays into space weren't about all kind of grand and glorious dreams, they were powered by the Cold War. This article explains it well:
Quote:

No one likes being deceived. One of the distressing features of coming to terms with the reality of capitalist society is learning that events which inspired us as children were based on quite different motives than we perceived at the time. Thirty years ago this month, on 20 July 1969, a human being stood on the surface of the moon for the very first time. I cannot have been the only child who truly believed Neil Armstrong when he stepped out from the lunar lander and uttered those famous words, 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'

The drive to discover and explore the natural world is surely one of humanity's endearing attributes. Who but a total cynic could not be moved by the beauty of our solar system as it has unfolded over the past few decades? Whether it is the awesome volcanoes and canyons of Mars, the boiling hell of Venus, the aquamarine beauty of the blue gas giant Uranus or its strange, scrambled moon, Miranda, it is hard to know whether to class these images as science or art.

Yet space exploration has been inextricably bound up with another rather more sinister tendency the drive within capitalism towards war. The pioneering efforts in rocketry of characters like the American Robert H Goddard were largely ignored or ridiculed by the establishment. What helped to change this attitude was the very practical wartime demonstration, by the German V-2 missile, that rockets could be powerful weapons of mass destruction.
.....
At the height of the Cold War the announcement, in 1954, of plans for an International Geophysics Year seemed heaven sent. Every country in the world was invited to try its hand at launching a research satellite during 1957-58. What a perfect cover! In 1955 President Eisenhower approved the secret plans for the first US spy satellite. It seemed certain that the US would be making all the running in the race into space. What no one expected was that the Russians might get there first.

The successful launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite on 4 October 1957 sent a tremor through the US establishment. The Russians were supposed to be a race of backward farmers, whose country's technology was being stretched to the limit just keeping their tractors running. And yet here they were launching a 183 pound satellite into space, while the US was still struggling to get a five pound one off the ground. Democrat Lyndon B Johnson was one US politician willing to provide a voice for the hysteria which swept the US caused by the launch of Sputnik. Johnson talked of how the sky above his Texas ranch was now full of ominous question marks: 'I don't want to go to sleep by a Communist moon.' In the midst of his tirades Johnson let slip the real reasons behind the space race: 'If, out in space, there is the ultimate position--from which total control of the earth may be exercised--then our national goal... must be to win and hold that position.'

In the context of the Cold War, civilian and military goals had become intertwined. The conquest of space had now become a crucial psychological test. An ostensibly civilian space agency would also provide very useful cover for the development of new intercontinental rocket systems and spy satellites. So it was that Nasa was born in 1958.

Things had still to go the US's way, however. In 1961 Russia again pipped the US to the post, sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. Only one goal seemed to be left. In May 1961, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs debacle, President Kennedy vowed that the US would put a man on the moon within the decade.

The lunar landings still stand as a measure of humankind's technological achievements. From a scientific point of view, however, they were of extremely limited value. Such, at least, was the view of geophysicists at the prestigious Carnegie Institute, who voted their disapproval of the Apollo programme by 110 to three. What was perhaps most surprising was how quickly the excitement over the lunar landing dissipated. By the time the astronauts made their successful return to earth, interest was already beginning to wane. One factor in this was that there were other, more terrestrial distractions. The Vietnam War was, after all, in full swing. The irony was that the whole point of the moon landing had been to demonstrate the US's overwhelming technological superiority. And yet here it was being trounced by a tiny Third World country.

The writer Norman Mailer could not make up his mind as to whether the lunar project was 'the noblest expression of the 20th century or the quintessential statement of our fundamental insanity'. Mailer had identified the contradiction at the heart of capitalism itself. On the one hand, the collective inspiration and ingenuity of human beings making possible a voyage into the heavens that would have truly astounded past generations. On the other hand, a system that uses such events as a cover for developing ever more powerful weapons of destruction. http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr232/parrington.htm

Since there is no more cold war, there is no more need to show we are better than the USSR. I've heard that numerous times, and it is what makes the most sense to me. If it's true, it's very sad; I certainly wouldn't wish for another Cold War to be what gets us back in space. But it's also sad that, barring one, we probably won't make much more headway into space for a long, long time to come.



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Wednesday, May 2, 2012 2:20 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht


I agree with Cat Pirate, this is a total embarassment. :(

I assume you're my pal until you let me know otherwise.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya.

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