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Bush to Announce Mission to Mars, Moon (pg. 7)
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| whiskers |
| quote: | Originally posted by DaveSaenz
If this had anything to do with Bush's new Mars plan that has diverted funds from other programs, I can't support his new plan:
http://www.npr.org/display_pages/fe...re_1602589.html
To put it bluntly, the Hubble Telescope is far more important to science than a symbolic landing of humans on Mars. I think when its batteries die, and systems fail, it will be an incredible loss for knowledge and for humanity. If it was really about “safety” and not funding, then I can understand. I know the government gives us a-lot of doublespeak though. |
yes, i agree, the Hubble Program cancellation is quite outrageous... yes, it's old, but it's extremely important!
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/space/2358102
and if i had a reason to be against a manned Mars mission it would because i'm not gonna get to go :whip: |
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| NeoPhono |
You're going to think of me as some ideolistic nut-job, but here's how I see the Hubble situation.
Hubble has done an excellent job of allowing us to see beyond Earth and our own galaxy, allowing us to see a plethora of new things and teaching us a great deal. However, after all the time we have had with Hubble, we are no closer to the places we have seen. The Mars mission may be an infintesimally small step to getting us to the sights seen by Hubble, but it is at least a step. In our lifetimes we will never have the technology to get us to the places that Hubble has shown us, but if we never begin the process, we will never get there in anyone's lifetime. Hubble has taken some wonderful postcards of the great tourist spots of the Universe, now its time to start thinking about making a real visit. It's great to see the Universe through a telescope's lens, but I want to see it through human eyes.
No, I'm not high right now. |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
The first article was interesting. But it revealed in the article itself why space based "negation" systems are inefficient compared to ground based systems. Why field a billion dollar system that is succeptible to ASATs? At any rate, the MD program is focusing most of its efforts on the two ground based systems since those are the most feasible technologies.
/my opinion |
U.S. Eyes Space as Possible Battleground
2 hours, 46 minutes ago
By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's plan to expand the exploration of space parallels U.S. efforts to control the heavens for military, economic and strategic gain.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld long has pushed for technology that could be used to attack or defend orbiting satellites as well as a costly program, heavily reliant on space-based sensors, to thwart incoming warheads.
Under a 1996 space policy adopted by then-President Bill Clinton that remains in effect, the United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space "by all nations for peaceful purposes for the benefit of all humanity."
"Peaceful purposes allow defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national security and other goals," according to this policy. "Consistent with treaty obligations, the United States will develop, operate and maintain space control capabilities to ensure freedom of action in space, and if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."
No country depends on space and satellites as its eyes and ears more than the United States, which accounted for as much as 95 percent of global military space spending in 1999, according to the French space agency CNES.
"Yet the threat to the U.S. and its allies in and from space does not command the attention it merits from the departments and agencies of the U.S. government charged with national security responsibilities," a congressionally chartered task force headed by Rumsfeld reported 10 days before Bush and he took office in 2001.
Theresa Hitchens of the private Center for Defense Information said the capabilities to conduct space warfare would move out of the realm of science fiction and into reality over the next 20 years or so.
"At the end of the day it will be political choices by governments, not technology, that determines if the nearly 50- year taboo against arming the heavens remains in place," she concluded in a recent study.
Outlining his election-year vision for space exploration last week, Bush called for a permanent base on the moon by 2020 as a launch pad for piloted missions to Mars and beyond.
One unspoken motivation may have been China's milestone launch in October of its first piloted spaceflight in earth orbit and its announced plan to go to the moon.
"I think the new initiative is driven by a desire to beat the Chinese to the moon," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and space policy research group.
Among companies that could cash in on Bush's space plans are Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp., which do big business with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as with the Pentagon.
The moon, scientists have said, is a source of potentially unlimited energy in the form of the helium 3 isotope -- a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtually no radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor.
"And if we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn't have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be," said Pike.
Gerald Kulcinski of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin at Madison estimated the moon's helium 3 would have a cash value of perhaps $4 billion a ton in terms of its energy equivalent in oil.
Scientists reckon there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the earth for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 30 tons could meet all U.S. electric power needs for a year, Kulcinski said by e-mail.
Bush's schedule for a U.S. return to the moon matches what experts say may be a dramatic militarization of space over the next two decades, even if the current ban on weapons holds.
Among other things, the Pentagon expects to spend at least $50 billion over the next five years to develop and field a multi-layered shield against incoming missiles that could deliver nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Ultimately, this shield -- first proposed by President Ronald Reagan and dubbed "Star Wars" by critics -- may include space-based interceptors, the first weapons in space, as opposed to sensors that guide weapons.
Last year, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency obtained $14 million for research on basing three or more missile interceptors in space by the end of the decade for tests.
The plan would field satellites armed with multiple "hit-to-kill" interceptors capable of destroying a ballistic missile through a high-speed collision shortly after its launch, according to Wade Boese, research director of the private Arms Control Association. Such a system could also function as an anti-satellite weapon.
No decision has been made yet to deploy space-based interceptors as part of the U.S. missile defense program "although we are conducting research and development activities in that area," a Defense Department official said Friday.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...pace_weapons_dc |
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| Trancer-X |
Where are my pejoratively labeling 'Conspiracy Theorist' oppugner's now?
Where's the know-it-all contention I was anticipating?
What's going on here? |
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| Trancer-X |
| quote: | Originally posted by Galapidate
Does anyone else see the problem for itself? Does anyone see that Bush tries to divert the American peoples' mindsets with these things whenever something is wrong with the country? |
It's called subterfuge. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by Trancer-X
Where are my pejoratively labeling 'Conspiracy Theorist' oppugner's now?
Where's the know-it-all contention I was anticipating?
What's going on here? |
Hehe take it easy. I was more or less joking. I never doubted that space based weaponry was never going to happen. It's an inevitability in the future in as much as war has moved to the seas and then to the air. The topic of discussion was NASA's restructuring to get to the moon and after your original post, I mistook your post to reference NASA as some kind of coverup for a space weaponry development program ... which it clearly doesn't need to be as their are existing programs designed to accomplish that end as you so succintly pointed out ;) |
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| DaveSaenz |
| quote: | Originally posted by NeoPhono
You're going to think of me as some ideolistic nut-job, but here's how I see the Hubble situation.
Hubble has done an excellent job of allowing us to see beyond Earth and our own galaxy, allowing us to see a plethora of new things and teaching us a great deal. However, after all the time we have had with Hubble, we are no closer to the places we have seen. The Mars mission may be an infintesimally small step to getting us to the sights seen by Hubble, but it is at least a step. In our lifetimes we will never have the technology to get us to the places that Hubble has shown us, but if we never begin the process, we will never get there in anyone's lifetime. Hubble has taken some wonderful postcards of the great tourist spots of the Universe, now its time to start thinking about making a real visit. It's great to see the Universe through a telescope's lens, but I want to see it through human eyes.
No, I'm not high right now. |
The only problem with that is the universal speed limit; the speed of light. But ironically that same limit is what allows Hubble to see billions of years into our past. |
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| NeoPhono |
Well, I agree with the speed of light "limit," as to traditional velocity, but there are ways around it, although theoretical. They are way beyond our technology at this time, but two leading methods of so-called "faster than light" travel would be worm holes and warp drive, namely the proposed Alcubiere drive. Also, a group of physicists suppossedly transmitted Mozart's 40th symphony through a barrier faster than the speed of light useing quantum tunnelling. Regardless, both forms of faster than light transportation require negative energy, and that is a stumper. Communication at faster than light may be in our not-to-distant future, but faster than light travel will take a while. We gotta start sometime though...it's fun to dream.
Alcubiere
Worm Holes
Mozart FTL
Good all-around article on FTL travel and communication. |
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| St_Andrew |
| quote: | Originally posted by NeoPhono
Well, I agree with the speed of light "limit," as to traditional velocity, but there are ways around it, although theoretical. They are way beyond our technology at this time, but two leading methods of so-called "faster than light" travel would be worm holes and warp drive, namely the proposed Alcubiere drive. Also, a group of physicists suppossedly transmitted Mozart's 40th symphony through a barrier faster than the speed of light useing quantum tunnelling. Regardless, both forms of faster than light transportation require negative energy, and that is a stumper. Communication at faster than light may be in our not-to-distant future, but faster than light travel will take a while. We gotta start sometime though...it's fun to dream.
Alcubiere
Worm Holes
Mozart FTL
Good all-around article on FTL travel and communication. |
wow those star wars things are cool :cool: |
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| MisterOpus1 |
I tend to find this whole space program a little ironic, considering Bush has practically pissed on the majority of scientific research as a whole for pro-business and pro-religious interests. So you'll have to excuse me for being a little skeptical of Bush's intentions. While I think he may have a few good intentions, I tend to believe the majority of his intentions with this space program is a sincere diversion to our domestic and war difficulties.
Oh yeah, did you hear they now have pamplets at the Grand Canyon that give Creationist theories to it's possible formation? Love that faith-based initiative by Bush. Just piss on science a little more why don't you?:
http://www.workingforchange.com/art...fm?itemid=16200 |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
I tend to find this whole space program a little ironic, considering Bush has practically pissed on the majority of scientific research as a whole for pro-business and pro-religious interests. So you'll have to excuse me for being a little skeptical of Bush's intentions. While I think he may have a few good intentions, I tend to believe the majority of his intentions with this space program is a sincere diversion to our domestic and war difficulties.
Oh yeah, did you hear they now have pamplets at the Grand Canyon that give Creationist theories to it's possible formation? Love that faith-based initiative by Bush. Just piss on science a little more why don't you?:
http://www.workingforchange.com/art...fm?itemid=16200 |
Going to mars doesn't conflict with theism so I would imagine it wouldn't assault his sensibilities :) |
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| MisterOpus1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by occrider
Going to mars doesn't conflict with theism so I would imagine it wouldn't assault his sensibilities :) |
It's not the conflict with beliefs that I'm getting at. It's the irony of him spending money (though much of it is merely diverted in NASA programs) on a science program while at the same time dropped dung on other science programs to make way for his faith-based initiatives. That is the crux of my skepticism.
I do believe, however, that Bush's religious speak is nothing but lip service to appeal to religious voters, but that's just my personal opinion. |
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