Can anyone clarify the NASA space program cancelations.

[menaceh2k]

Is the whole NASA space program currently canceled?

I know that the Xprise was croudsourcing missions to the moon, but I did not think that they would replace NASA. If this is true, do you guys think that its a good thing to privatize space missions.

 

[thoumyvision]

Let me Google that for you.

 

[menaceh2k]

well that was not nice.

I did google it, hence the clarification portion in my post topic. I just could not believe my eyes. I wanted words from the counsel of elders. Guess INTPforum.com should just redirect itself to google.com, or maybe you belong on an INTJ forum. Besides, I'm surprised no one talked about it, being that this is a big astronomy crowed and all. Well I best be on my way then.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

I thought it was primarily the shuttle program that was cancelled.

 

[thoumyvision]

In answer to your second question, I absolutely think it's a good idea to privatize space missions. There is a vast wealth of resources out there, and monetizing resources is not the responsibility of the government.

If the wealthy tech companies start buying mining corporations and some of the new spaceflight startups we could have the makings of a whole new industry with the potential to create millions of jobs and make some new entrepreneurs extremely wealthy.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Yes giving business th reins is an exceptional idea.

Business always has and always will act in the interest of the quick buck, which I'm sure is going to cause an even more massive problem regarding space junk.

It always astonishes me when people trust business to act in a responsible or ethical manner. Then they have the sheer gall to act surprised and horrified when the inevitable happens. The very purpose of business is to turn profits, this trumps everything else: responsibility, ethics, everything. It's governments job to keep business interest in line, keep them semi-humane, but who owns government, who buys the politicians?

We're all screwed, but our skinner boxes are lovely.

 

[JoeJoe]

I want orbital laZer battlZ!!

 

[Jah]

Oh, google for him
speaking of which:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html

(Or; Why Google Gives Different Results On Different PCs, (Results may vary).)

 

[Causeless]

Business always has and always will act in the interest of the quick buck, which I'm sure is going to cause an even more massive problem regarding space junk.

It always astonishes me when people trust business to act in a responsible or ethical manner. Then they have the sheer gall to act surprised and horrified when the inevitable happens. The very purpose of business is to turn profits, this trumps everything else: responsibility, ethics, everything. It's governments job to keep business interest in line, keep them semi-humane, but who owns government, who buys the politicians?

We're all screwed, but our skinner boxes are lovely.

This said, I'd still work for Weyland-Yutani.

I'd fuck some predators up yo!

 

[thoumyvision]

Business always has and always will act in the interest of the quick buck, which I'm sure is going to cause an even more massive problem regarding space junk.

This simply isn't true. There are plenty of companies who take a long view, and take a consumer positive view. Yes, the bottom line is extremely important to them, but really that's as it should be, they have a responsibility to their investors.

Look at Google, their business model is based around providing fantastic services and products for free and then making money off advertising because so many people use their awesome services. This is a genius business model, and one that is extremely good for the consumer: we get amazing services like Gmail, Maps, Docs, Chrome, etc. for the low low price of having to ignore some mostly unobtrusive advertising.

It always astonishes me when people trust business to act in a responsible or ethical manner. Then they have the sheer gall to act surprised and horrified when the inevitable happens. The very purpose of business is to turn profits, this trumps everything else: responsibility, ethics, everything. It's governments job to keep business interest in line, keep them semi-humane, but who owns government, who buys the politicians?

Of course it's silly to expect business to act in a responsible or ethical manner. However, they do act in a predictable manner. Profits should not be viewed as a "bad thing", because a high profit margin is a good indication that a company is damn good at what they do. On the flip side, being massively in debt is a good indication that an organization is pretty damn bad at what they do... hmm... I wonder what that says about our government?

 

[Melllvar]

Well, based on the history of space travel since the end of the Apollo program, I'd say it's about time to give someone else a shot at it, at least. It sure isn't going anywhere fast at this rate, and government can always back it through subsidies and grants, if they want.

I remember reading recently that Virgin Galactic was even producing parts for their orbital rockets cheaper than the Chinese competitors, which is somewhat impressive considering they're doing it in the US (I think part of the system was hiring lots of entry-level engineers who would work for less than their more seasoned counter-parts - not really that bad an idea in a field that usually shuns people over 40 anyway). Anyway, yeah I think privatized space travel is the future of the whole thing. NASA just can't get the funding and half of what they do get is supposed to go to military and satellite programs.

As for things like orbital debris, they could be reduced by levying some kind of taxes/fines on polluting companies/programs (measured by the "unexplained" mass lost during the mission). They don't have to be aware of 100% of the debris lost in orbit, just able to create incentives for companies to not be careless about adding to the problem. Besides, it's not like the many government-run space programs haven't created the current orbital debris problem anyway, and they're immune to any incentives to keep it clean. I'm sure people can debate how such a system might just force space programs into countries without such fines for orbital pollution, but such is the nature of competitive government.

 

[gcomeau]

Bottom line, you need government research programs to foot the built for high risk high cost large scale experimental programs. So, NASA did it's jobs developing and proving out things like shuttle technology in the first place because the simple fact is that NO private enterprise was EVER going to pay for that. Leave that up to the market and our space capabilities would be fantastically reduced from what they are now.

However... that technology is mature now. NASA should be moving on to work on something else that *only it can do*, not continuing to pay orbital chauffeur indefinitely when the general tech base of the nation/world is up to the point where other entities can take over and finance that function now.

(Personally, I want to see development of viable intra-stellar propulsion systems for Mars trips about 100,000 times more than I want to see NASA continuing to spend their budget and resources sending shuttles up over and over...)

 

[Vrecknidj]

http://www.nasa.gov/news/index.html