Shuttle launch scrubbed for today

[Guest ThrottleUp]

-------------------------------------------------------All this talk of putting men on Mars within 30 years is frankly laughable-------------------------------------------------------I agree. I will be shocked if we see another Moon (let alone Mars) mission in our lifetime.

[Guest]

2 things: 1) the situation shows a total disinterest for human space exploration. If that continues soon we'll have abandoned space making it impossible to get up there at all when the need arises.2) we may have a long time but things move excruciatingly slowly. Effectively now that the shuttle is nearing retirement we're back in technology to where we were before Apollo.We've lost the technology to go to the moon, we'll soon have lost our capability to launch any humans at all except in Soviet capsules designed in the early 1960s.Had we continued on from Apollo we'd have had those space settlements by now, with potentially hundreds of thousands of people living in space permanently and working there.No more population pressure or depletion of natural resources.At the current rate we're never going to get there. Instead we'll end up waiting until it's too late to do anything and then end up being destroyed with our planet (or having the planet run out of the means to set up a viable space colonisation effort and us dieing out due to lack of natural resources).Maybe slightly sarcastic but my view of democracies and longterm projects is as follows:Any project that takes more than 4 years to show results a politician can use as a campaign item does not get funded

[michal 44]

>Yes, but surely you can see Jeroen's point ? Nope I can't. His point connecting the Space Shuttle (or its follow-up) with survival of human race and colonization of other celestial objects I found totally ludicrous. If it was meant to be a joke - I apologize for not catching it.>It is staggering to think that the X-33 (which, in my opinion,>COULD have been completed and used as an effective replacement>for the current shuttles), I am glad you say YOUR opinion. Other more qualifiied people disagreed about long term prognosis for X-33 or whether it could have been fixed. I am no expert on the subject. Frankly when my personal tax $$ are concerned I will glady pay for robotic missions like Cassini, Opportunity or the recent comet mission - they excite me, I see presence of humans in space at the moment as total waste of money specially when hundereds of billions are involved.>All this talk of putting men on Mars within 30 years is>frankly laughable in the light of such a dilemma.It is. Lets wait for breakthrough in racket technology before sending people to Mars when we can get there easily and in style, using right tools for the job is the key. On the other hand I was great supporter of the Apollo program - because technology matched the target.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_beta_member.jpg

[Guest oyvindhansen]

Why not just ditch the ISS, it's pretty useless and appears to exist just to keep the Shuttle going. Scientifically it is of very little value, especially when you start to consider what could be achieved with the same money in earth based science. With the space race gone there is no longer any need to send people into space, and the russian launches are a lot cheaper anyway.btw, all the interesting facts we have learned about space lately comes from unmanned expeditions.-

[michal 44]

I agree 100%. I see little justification for ISS. It is a large piece of (rather expensive) hardware for the sake of this hardware. I know it performed some 'political' function in keeping some former Soviet scientists and engineer employed and giving some other minor nations fuzzy warm feeling of doing something in space. We should end this pretense and start funding more interplanetary unmanned missions where the bulk of our space science come from and where my (& your) tax dollar is better utilized.Michael J.

[Guest]

ISS is a vital stepping stone towards space colonisation and the initiation of deep space manned exploration and exploitation.It's a vital link for the longterm survival of the human race, without it we would loose the ability to reach space and eventually perish on this dirtball.The old argument "all science has been done, everything has been discovered" has been proven wrong time and again.Anyway, the money invested in it (which isn't much overall) would just be wasted on "social" programs (iow, make-work programs for politicians) otherwise.The only reason the blockbuster announcements you see in the news sometimes are from unmanned missions is that there are so darn few manned missions going up.ISS is doing valuable research but nothing that makes a nice 20 second sound bite on the evening news and therefore it's not reported.TV airheads aren't interested in molecular film research, microgravity crystal growth, etc. etc. These are showing incredible promise in places like medical applications, allowing the production of far more effective medicines at low prices (if we only get the launchcost down which would happen instantly if we had people living in space permanently and mining it for raw materials) which could cure many diseases.If we can mine the asteroids (or even the moon, though that's another dirtball which may prove uneconomical in the long term) we could stop mining for minerals on earth, instead sending down everything we need (including loads and loads of clean hydrogen fuel and oxygen).Manned permanent settlements in space are also vital for maintenance and construction (at least oversight) of solar power stations in orbit (or elsewhere in the system) which can provide (almost) free, completely clean, and all but limitless energy (thus doing away with the need to build any kind of powerstations on earth, greatly reducing polution).Still think we should cower down here, eating up natural resources at an ever increasing rate, breeding like rats until we're so densely packed there's no more place to grow food and we all starve?

[Christopher Low 5,354]

>Nope I can't. His point connecting the Space Shuttle (or its follow-up) with survival >of human race and colonization of other celestial objects I found totally ludicrous. If it >was meant to be a joke - I >apologize for not catching it.Well, I was referring to the part about there being no replacement for the shuttle on the (visible) drawing board. Any number of secret agencies could be designing God knows what behind the American public's backs.>Frankly when my personal tax $$ are concerned I will glady pay for robotic missions >like Cassini, Opportunity or the recent comet mission - they excite me, I see presence >of humans in space at the moment as total waste of money specially when hundreds >of billions are involved.I completely agree. I love seeing all of the information and pictures sent back by probes like Cassini and Galileo, and it is certainly more interesting than the rather predictable (and boring) stuff that is associated with virtually every shuttle mission. However, I am pretty sure that NASA would like to see manned space exploration continue, and that is why I am so puzzled that a replacement is nowhere to be seen.Chris Low.