A great achievement for mankind and the USA, now the NASA program for space exploration is in jeopardy due to a bankrupt America and political infighting over funding the expensive project.
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I just finished watching "The Space Shuttles Last Flight", a BBC documentary. There were parts that were just so memorable.. and quite painful.. I'm sure you can imagine which parts...
But then there are other parts that are so proud to be an American, and at what we accomplished when we set our mind to it.
But it's over now. Now it is time for China, India and others to show us the next journey into deep space, it would seem.
I'm curious what everyone's thoughts are on this 30-year journey of the space shuttle program coming to an end.
I seem to disagree with a lot of people that I would typically agree with on this issue.
Just in general though, I think NASA is actually one of those few things the government actually does well. Being in that field is probably a good platform for technological advancement that may one day save the world, or produce weapons that we could find useful.
But basically, I don't really have a strong opinion about it not being active for the moment. The country needs to get it's house in order financially. We've spent too much capital in creating this 'entitlement society,' and it is expensive. The space program could come back online once people start thinking like adults and get the budget in order.
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I mostly agree. What we'll see is more advancement in the private sector, often with commercial aspects (money) which later can fuel advancement for the government projects hopefully.
I just don't want to see China first to Mars for example...
I kinda wish they would first put all the money into the biggest baddest space telescope that will let us see everything and then spend money on the rest of it. Man on Mars, woo hoo. I wanna see me some freakin aliens already.
No really, my wife went to law school with his wife. He works at NASA Goddard, outside of Washington, DC and once (during the 90's) he gave me a tour. LOTSA cool hardware.
The whole point was to exactly time when X rays were coming in, and from that determine physical properties of spinning celestial objects.
From Wikipedia: "Observations from the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer have been used as evidence for the existence of the frame-dragging effect predicted by the theory of general relativity. RXTE results have, as of late 2007, been used in more than 1400 scientific papers."
That's all cool, but what I liked was that during the tour the thing was still being built, so I got to to "kick the tires." If it had optics I would have had to don a clean suit, or more likely not allowed near it, but with an X ray satellite it was more like a very expensive car garage.
I think it's pretty neat that I got to touch something that is now in orbit over our heads. Well, for a while. When I looked at Wikipedia to get the info above, I saw that it ceased operations in 2012, and is expected to re-enter the earths atmosphere "between 2014 and 2023." I guess everything ends someday...
Something about V'Ger having to deal with all new emotions as a 'baby'.
Spock replying 'yes, Vger will have to deal with them too'.
The underrated , very sci-fi 1st Start Trek movie. Star Trek the Motion Picture, (1977), directed by Robert Wise, (Yes, the "Sound of Music" 's director!) Paramount's response to "Star Wars". Disney has the "the Black Hole".
The main theme composed by Jerry Goldsmith (former Twilight Zone (some epsiodes, 1964-1968) and Planet of the Apes(1968), Tora Tora Tora, Papillion, other movies etc. composer ) , which Roddenberry later used for the main theme of The Next Generation.
Until J.J. Abrams' Trek's, it had the biggest budget of all the Star Trek movies, $40 million in 1977 dollars, considering the inflation, almost 5x "Star Wars"'s budget. Then they hired the guy who did the "Six Million Dollar Man" and other TV shows to produce Star Trek 2: "The Wrath of Khan" at a much smaller budget. Then every movie after until Star Trek 10 "Nemesis" kept having shoestring crappy budgets.
now if they (NASA - I worked there once) would just take a similar photo of one of the previous landing sites from the Apollo missions and prove there's a flag left, or a rover stand or the LEM lower platform,
that would put all (us) conspiracy theorists to rest!
