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Apollo 8 Crew member: NASA Sucks(paraphrase) (1 Viewer)

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Hawkeye10

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"Nasa couldn't get to the Moon today. They're so ossified... Nasa has turned into a jobs programme... many of the centres are mainly interested in keeping busy and you don't see the public support other than they get the workers their pay and their congressmen get re-elected."

Anders is also critical of the decision to focus on near-Earth orbit exploration after the completion of the Apollo programme in the 1970s. "I think the space shuttle was a serious error. It hardly did anything except have an exciting launch, but it never lived up to its promise," he said.

"The space station is only there because you had a shuttle, and vice-versa. Nasa really mismanaged the manned programme since the late lunar landings.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46364179

Hear Hear!
 
The space shuttle was by far the most successful craft ever created. It allowed for construction of the ISS, Hubble launch and repair, many satellite and probe uses and advancement if technologies. Lunar dust played a major role in our not playing on the moon, it is deadly to people and equipment...we will probably go back commercially though regardless.
 
tecoyah said:
The space shuttle was by far the most successful craft ever created. It allowed for construction of the ISS, Hubble launch and repair, many satellite and probe uses and advancement if technologies. Lunar dust played a major role in our not playing on the moon, it is deadly to people and equipment...we will probably go back commercially though regardless.
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The Space Station has been damn near useless, and soon it will be over. The other launches could have been done much cheaper and without killing people had standard rockets been used.

You get Hubble repair with the stipulation that one of those missions was required only because NASA messed up on the construction of Hubble.
 
We are currently at full speed to capture asteroids. To begin the resource extraction in near-ish earth orbit.

This will be the greatest single jump in human wealth ever.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
The Space Station has been damn near useless, and soon it will be over. The other launches could have been done much cheaper and without killing people had standard rockets been used.

You get Hubble repair with the stipulation that one of those missions was required only because NASA messed up on the construction of Hubble.
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You are certainly welcome to your opinion, as are myself, scientists worldwide, astronauts and cosmonauts, multiple national Governments and most of the rest of the world.
 
Tim the plumber said:
We are currently at full speed to capture asteroids. To begin the resource extraction in near-ish earth orbit.

This will be the greatest single jump in human wealth ever.
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Things they be a changin'
 
Tim the plumber said:
We are currently at full speed to capture asteroids. To begin the resource extraction in near-ish earth orbit.

This will be the greatest single jump in human wealth ever.
Click to expand...


This presumes there are plenty of resources in the asteroids worth pursuing.
 
PirateMk1 said:
This presumes there are plenty of resources in the asteroids worth pursuing.
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So much easily accessable resources that there must be although there is in fact massively good stuff up there.

Stuff that will make electric cars with extremely good performance and range cheaper than petrol ones. For example.
 
Tim the plumber said:

So much easily accessable resources that there must be although there is in fact massively good stuff up there.

Stuff that will make electric cars with extremely good performance and range cheaper than petrol ones. For example.
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Where are you getting that from? I dont remember we having a lot of geological surveys of the various asteroids. Most of the potential has simply been extrapolation guestimates. Those are worth the paper they were scratched on.
 
PirateMk1 said:
Where are you getting that from? I dont remember we having a lot of geological surveys of the various asteroids. Most of the potential has simply been extrapolation guestimates. Those are worth the paper they were scratched on.
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On earth it is practicle to dig down a few meters for open cast mining or further for deep drift mining.

In space it is easy to dig as there is no gravity to make the deepest much different to the shallowest it there are vast amounts more availible due to the sruface area of lots of asteroids simply having more surface area.

But we do know that all asteroids are made of different stuff than the surface of this planet. This planet has had the process of being a vast liquid ball that has formed a crust of silicon type slag (as in iron slag), the continents. The heavy elements have dropped out to the depths of the earth. This sifting has resulted in the place which is good for living on but means that there are a lot less heavy elements and metals around for us to use than there are out there.

A lot less in the way of fertile soil.

But a lot more in the way of gold and titanium.
 
Tim the plumber said:
On earth it is practicle to dig down a few meters for open cast mining or further for deep drift mining.

In space it is easy to dig as there is no gravity to make the deepest much different to the shallowest it there are vast amounts more availible due to the sruface area of lots of asteroids simply having more surface area.

But we do know that all asteroids are made of different stuff than the surface of this planet. This planet has had the process of being a vast liquid ball that has formed a crust of silicon type slag (as in iron slag), the continents. The heavy elements have dropped out to the depths of the earth. This sifting has resulted in the place which is good for living on but means that there are a lot less heavy elements and metals around for us to use than there are out there.

A lot less in the way of fertile soil.

But a lot more in the way of gold and titanium.
Click to expand...

In space on an asteroid mining does not mean digging. Its a matter of breaking down the asteroid into manageable chunks that can then be processed in a refinery either on ship or specialty facility. In order to determine if a an asteroid is worth the fuel and energy to process it has to be surveyed. We have done very little of that. We dont really know how much currently valuable material is actually in the asteroids.
 
PirateMk1 said:
In space on an asteroid mining does not mean digging. Its a matter of breaking down the asteroid into manageable chunks that can then be processed in a refinery either on ship or specialty facility. In order to determine if a an asteroid is worth the fuel and energy to process it has to be surveyed. We have done very little of that. We dont really know how much currently valuable material is actually in the asteroids.
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Yes.

The prospecting of asteroids is the next step. This I expect to be done by very tiny robots, of the order in size of a foot ball.

Then you have to stabilize it, stop it rotating, and then use the mass you don't want as reaction mass and change its' orbital path such that you can get the thing to come to earth/moon. Couple of dozen sling shots around the moon and you get to orbit the earth.

Asteroids which can be got here easily will be the first done, I expect, almost irrespective of what they are made of.
 
tecoyah said:
You are certainly welcome to your opinion, as are myself, scientists worldwide, astronauts and cosmonauts, multiple national Governments and most of the rest of the world.
Click to expand...

Well now there is a nothing burger post.
 
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