Good job, NASA. No wonder this country is going down a freakin' hole.... by Wishimay

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Good job, NASA. No wonder this country is going down a freakin' hole....

POSTED BY: WISHIMAY
UPDATED: Tuesday, February 16, 2016 17:35
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VIEWED: 4228
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Tuesday, December 16, 2014 1:57 PM

http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/273774/speedreads-nasa-built-a-349
-million-tower-only-to-shut-it-down-before-it-was-ever-used

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Tuesday, December 16, 2014 2:07 PM

AURAPTOR

America loves a winner!

There was a tower gap that needed to be closed.

Mission accomplished!

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Tuesday, December 16, 2014 2:58 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
There was a tower gap that needed to be closed.

Mission accomplished!

“The International Space Station was sold as an $8 billion program. It ended up costing $100 billion. The Webb telescope was sold as a $1 billion program. It’s now up to $8 billion,” said Lori Garver, who served as the number two official at NASA from 2009 until last year. “It usually works out for them,” she said, meaning the contractors get paid, even when they raise the price. -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/12/15/nasas-349-million
-monument-to-its-drift/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 17, 2014 3:25 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Back in 2005, the Army planned to have Raytheon build 32 blimps at a cost of about $180 million each. But growing doubts and hemorrhaging costs, along with the destruction of one blimp in a collision, led the Pentagon to hit the brakes in 2012. There would be no more new blimps, just testing for the prototypes that had already been constructed.

That brings the price tag for the two remaining blimps to around $1.4 billion each, if development costs are counted. (Technically, there’s another duo mothballed in storage in the Utah desert, but there are no current plans to use them.) That’s serious money, even by federal government standards.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/17/billion-dollar-surveilla
nce-blimp-launch-maryland/

Dec 14, 2014 Time-lapse of the inflation of a billion dollar blimp at Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, December 23, 2014 3:38 AM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

Blame congress. The tower became a jobs project for the local politicianz.

Herez wuz up for 2015 http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/FY15_Summary_Brief.pdf

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Wednesday, December 24, 2014 12:37 AM

JO753

rezident owtsidr

If I were King uv America, NASA woud be wut its all about. I'd multiply their bujet by 10.

----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early

http://www.nooalf.com

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Friday, December 26, 2014 2:50 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
If I were King uv America, NASA woud be wut its all about. I'd multiply their bujet by 10.

King Obama cannot do that, it would be a good investment in America, which he does not allow.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 10:46 AM

WISHIMAY

Good investment in America???

This is the only system we will ever be in. I firmly believe we will eradicate ourselves before we ever leave it. So we would only be pouring money into going to planets that we cannot really live on. Sure it would be trendy, but like the moon, no one will go back once we've been there.

I'm all for telescopes, but spending billions on things that don't seek to serve THIS planet in the long term are just a waste. Believe me, no one wants space travel more than I do, but I think people should take the sparkle-y Star Trek glasses off and be realistic.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 12:51 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:

I think people should take the sparkle-y Star Trek glasses off and be realistic.

6/28/2015
With SpaceX Rocket Explosion, NASA's Now Had Three Cargo Failures From Three Providers
www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2015/06/28/with-spacex-rocket-failure-n
asas-now-had-three-cargo-failures-from-three-providers/

Despite commercial failures, NASA will not be getting a refund from any company because that is the way the contracts were written. NASA and the US Government take all the financial risk. You know, got to look after the welfare of SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk. He was so disappointed when his rocket exploded on his birthday, ruining his party. It would have been twice as tragic if he also had to pay for the rocket failure.

Elon Musk is as close to being Tony Stark of The Avengers as it gets. But it's not even close.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 3:24 PM

WISHIMAY

Yeah, we're getting pretty good at the failure part...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3144873/U-S-air-force-s-sophis
ticated-stealth-jet-beaten-dogfight-plane-1970s-despite-expensive-weapon-history.html

350 Billion plane, coming to a used parts lot near you...

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 5:56 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
Yeah, we're getting pretty good at the failure part...
350 Billion plane, coming to a used parts lot near you...

But the plane is a success! You misunderstand what it was trying to succeed at.

Major F-35 industry partners are Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney and BAE Systems. There are subcontractors for the F-35 in nearly every state, overseas territory and Puerto Rico. The business plan was to make it impossible for Congress to change its mind and cancel the contracts. It would have been nice if the plane had lived up to the promised cost and speed and maneuverability, but that technical stuff was always beside the real point of the F-35. Money, it's really always about the money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-35_Lightning_II

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 8:08 PM

WHOZIT

Another reason the private sector should take over space travel.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 9:29 PM

JONGSSTRAW

Quote:
Originally posted by whozit:

Another reason the private sector should take over space travel.

The private sector? They can't even make cars or testosterone gel that won't kill you. Always been NASA ... should always be NASA.

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015 11:23 PM

WISHIMAY

http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-schools-pension-payment-classroom-cuts-l
ikely-235954340.html

350 billion had to come from somewhere, ya?

Can't nobody DO anything about it, either.

Those who blindly follow will always outnumber those that don't.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2015 6:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Horrifying Facts You Didn't Know About the Space Shuttle
www.forbes.com/sites/carolpinchefsky/2012/04/18/5-horrifying-facts-you
-didnt-know-about-the-space-shuttle/

1. The Shuttle killed more people than any other space vehicle in history.

The explosion of the Challenger killed seven people, six astronauts and one Teacher in Space participant, during the launch of its 10th mission in 1986. The explosion of the Columbia killed seven more during re-entry of its 28th mission in 2003.

Let me spell it out for you: out of five Shuttles–Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavor—two met a disastrous and fiery fate. That’s a 40% vehicular failure rate and a flight failure rate of 1.5%. This would have grounded any other vehicle permanently.

To compare, the Apollo I mission resulted in the death three astronauts during a launch pad test. The Mercury and Gemini missions had no fatalities.

The Chinese space program has currently had no fatalities.

As for the Russian space program, one cosmonaut died during the re-entry of the Soyuz 1, and three died on the Soyuz 11 after being exposed to vacuum.

(There is no hard data available on the deaths of Soviet-era cosmonauts, but unsubstantiated rumors suggest that there may have been Soviet casualties in the early days of the space race.)

2. It was extremely expensive

Although NASA says that it cost a trifling $450 million to launch each Shuttle mission, other sources find that price tag vastly underestimated. All five Shuttles flew a total of 135 missions. According to Space.com, in an article written in 2005,

If the space shuttle program is terminated after 2010, then it will have a total lifetime cost of about $173 billion, Pielke reported.

…Given that flight rate, this will result in a total program cost per flight of $1.3 billion, Pielke explained. Of further interest is the average cost per flight from 2004-2010: It is $1.3 billion. The average cost per flight from the middle of 2005 through 2010, assuming 22 flights, is about $1.0 billion, he said.

Nature followed up in 2011:

The US Congress and NASA spent more than US$192 billion (in 2010 dollars) on the shuttle from 1971 to 2010 (see ‘A costly enterprise’)…. During the operational years from 1982 to 2010, the average cost per launch was about $1.2 billion. Over the life of the programme, this increases to about $1.5 billion per launch

On the other hand, the Soyuz, the vehicle of choice of the Russian Space Agency (RSA), is less expensive by an order of magnitude. So how much does it cost to launch?

Watson said, “That number has never been publicized by the RSA, but it’s rumored to be as low as $45 million. Of course, in accordance with supply & demand, they’re now selling seats for $63 million a piece: initially “tickets” were selling for around $20 million.

“But even if it cost the RSA $80 million to launch, it’s still significantly cheaper than Shuttle.

According to MSNBC, “Russia is now seen as having the world’s safest, most cost-effective human spaceflight system.”

It’s also—and the irony here is almost painful—the only one you can buy a seat on. This makes the Soyuz both the most capitalist and the least government-funded space transportation option.

3. It never went very high.

Watson said, “The public has this mental image of [the Shuttle] going somewhere between the Earth and the Moon, and the fact is, it’s not true.”

The Shuttle had an operational altitude of only 120 to 600 miles. However, the Shuttle’s trip to the International Space Station (ISS) was only a 200-250 mile journey… approximately the distance between NYC and Boston. The Shuttle also flew to the Hubble Telescope, which is maintained at an altitude of 350 miles, a little less than the distance from NYC to Norfolk, VA.

In case you don’t remember it from science class, the distance between the Earth to the Moon is 238,000 miles.

4. It never worked according to parameters.

Plans for the Space Shuttle were created in 1972 as a way to keep the cost of spaceflight down. (And see what happened there.) Each Shuttle was supposed to fly fifty missions per year…yet it averaged approximately four flights a year. And here’s a shout-out to the late space station Skylab, which disintegrated in Earth’s atmosphere in 1979 because the Shuttle wasn’t built in time to boost its orbit.

Each Shuttle was designed for only ten years of life. Keeping the Shuttle flying for twenty years past expiration date stifled creativity and innovation.

Just how bad was the Space Shuttle? Even former NASA administrator Michael Griffin called it “a mistake.”

5) Did the Soviets Actually Build a Better Space Shuttle? Yes.

www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a9763/did-the-soviets-actually-
build-a-better-space-shuttle-16176311/

The Soviet engineers built an entirely new launch system for Buran. Instead of two relatively simple (but, as it turned out after the Challenger disaster, deadly unreliable) solid-rocket boosters, on the first stage, the Soviets employed four liquid-propellant rockets. Their legacy lives on today in the Russian–Ukrainian Zenit launcher.

The Buran engineers also used four main engines (instead of the shuttle's three) designed to provide most of the thrust during a ride to orbit. They placed these engines into a separate rocket stage, rather than on the winged orbiter itself, as was the case with the shuttle. This approach meant that the Soviet system would lose its main engines after each flight instead of returning them to Earth with the orbiter, making it less reusable. On the other hand, it meant that almost any conceivable cargo up to 95 tons, be it a space battle station, a lunar base module, or a Martian expeditionary vehicle, could be attached to the Buran's launch system. By contrast, the maximum payload of the space shuttle was limited by the 29-ton capacity of the orbiter's cargo bay.

Buran came on the scene when the last act of the Cold War was playing out. The new face in the Kremlin, Mikhail Gorbachev, was much more concerned with fixing the crumbling Soviet economy than with outspending the U.S. in the arms race. As a result, none of the large and expensive space projects, which would need the awesome capabilities of Buran, ever materialized, leaving the space truck without a cargo. By 1991, the collapse of the USSR and the economic crisis in Russia that followed left Buran and its infrastructure to decay.

Why the Soviet space shuttle was left to rot: http://goo.gl/Rm7lUv
The Soviets were wondering why the Americans were building such a large space shuttle.

"There wasn’t much guesswork involved since NASA, being a civilian organization, shared its plans for the new vehicle publicly. But by the Soviet military’s assessment, the shuttle wasn’t economically viable and inexplicably large. It was designed to launch as many as 50 times per year with its 30-ton payload bay full, could return up to 15 tons from orbit, and had an impressive 1,242 mile cross range capability that could support single-orbit missions. It seemed to the Soviets that the United States was positioning itself to build something massive in orbit like a military station or a weapon. The innocuous American vehicle now registered as a threat to which the Soviet Union responded in kind. Without knowing exactly what the American’s had planned, the Soviets decided that duplicating the shuttle was a safe way to match whatever capability the large vehicle would have."

http://threnody2.deviantart.com/art/Simon-543294091

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, July 1, 2015 7:35 PM

WHOZIT

Quote:
Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Quote:
Originally posted by whozit:

Another reason the private sector should take over space travel.

The private sector? They can't even make cars or testosterone gel that won't kill you. Always been NASA ... should always be NASA.[/quote

Two shuttles exploded and Apollo 1 killed 3 and never got off the ground. Was Serenity built by NASA, no it was not. I think the FORD Motor Company did.]

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Tuesday, February 16, 2016 5:26 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

The stupidly simple reason why the military lost control of a giant surveillance blimp
www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/02/16/the-stupidly-simp
le-reason-why-the-military-lost-control-of-a-giant-surveillance-blimp/

Last fall the military lost control of an unmanned surveillance blimp: The craft unmoored itself from a base in Maryland and drifted 100 miles over Pennsylvania, leaving destruction in its wake. A trailing tether downed powerlines and cut off electricity for tens of thousands of people; 911 lines were overwhelmed; college classes were canceled; and fighter jets were even deployed to track the blimp.

But all of that chaos could have been avoided if someone had done the sort of basic maintenance that keeps smoke detectors working: No one loaded the batteries needed to power an automatic-deflation device on the blimp, according to the Los Angeles Times.

www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-runaway-missile-defense-blimp-20160214-st
ory.html
The sequence of events that caused the blimp to break away began when a pitot tube, a narrow 18-inch-long device intended to measure air pressure within the blimp, malfunctioned. Ground personnel failed to detect or address the problem, investigators found.

Ordinarily, fans within the blimp would activate in response to a change in atmospheric conditions, such as increased winds. But because the pitot tube failed, the fans did not operate — and air pressure within the blimp started to drop.

The blimp turned so that it was perpendicular to the prevailing wind, instead of the desired parallel position. Gusts that reached 69 mph bent its vertical tail fins out of their normal shape.

This made the blimp unstable in the air, putting greater pressure on the mooring tether than it was designed to withstand, according to the investigative documents.

Still, the blimp was equipped with an automated device that should have caused it to deflate promptly and return to ground within two miles. The device failed to activate, because batteries had not been installed as a backup power source, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, confirmed the lapse: "The lack of batteries prevented the automatic rapid deflation device from deploying."

Military officials declined to say who was responsible for failing to load the batteries. The blimps were managed by Army and contractor personnel.

“There is a one-in-a-million chance of that tether breaking.” – Captain Matt Villa. The Space Shuttle also had a one-in-a-million chance of crashing, at least until the first time it crashed, then the official chance was lowered to one-in-a-hundred, until the second time it crashed. A million or a hundred, it's all just official hot air to convince you they are competent, until somebody dies.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, February 16, 2016 5:35 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

That picture- it looks like something out of the X-Files.

Awesome!!!

That's like the Mars probe that crash-landed because the engineering department was working in "miles" and the science department was working in "kilometers".

Stupidity happens everywhere. I just look at Space X trying to land a rocket on fins (FINS!!!) and I think Buck Rogers.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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