NASA must fund canceled rocket program

[Freddie Stubbs]

Source: UPI

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- NASA's Ares I rocket program is defunct but because of congressional inaction the space agency must continue to fund it until March, officials said.

The requirement will cost NASA almost $500 million as the agency battles with the costly task of replacing the space shuttle program, the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Sunday.

About $165 million will go to Alliant Techsystems as part of a $2 billion contract to build a solid-fuel first stage for the Ares, which was supposed to be part of the Constellation program to fill the space shuttle's role of launching astronauts to the International Space Station.

The money to Alliant is part of what NASA will spend on the canceled program from Oct. 1 through March.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/12/27/NASA-must-fund-canceled-rocket-program/UPI-13401293474984/

[tomm2thumbs]

1. when Bush said 'America is going to Mars' he never mentioned it was on Air India

[Red1]

2. I'm Not Sure

I don't understand Obamas 'vision' for continued space exploration or development of
orbital facilities...

Thought he was gonna put it on business to carry the ball?

If so, kiss the final frontiers good bye..

[Tommy_J]

3. Launches to low Earth orbit...

i.e. space station, will be by commercial companies. There is good reason to be happy about this. Just Google Spacex to see why I say this.

Under Obama's plan NASA will focus on Deep space with a more or less business as usual approach.

Edit for typo...

[FreakinDJ]

4. Ever heard of 85 - 100 % efficient Photovoltaic Solar Cells

You never well in Earth's gravity

[TheMadMonk]

14. Um, gravity no. Atmosphere and day-night cycle yes.

Also that would be 85-100% of theoretical maximums, not actual 85-100% efficiencies.

For the record, the Earth's "gravity" extends over at least three hundred million kilometers to the 3rd Lagrange point on the far side of the Sun.

[cowcommander]

5. Nobody cares about space exploration anymore...

All those dreams of making new colonies and discovering new worlds...nobody wants to fund it anymore... :(

[Crowman1979]

6. That's the because the scientific community is being infested with creationists.

Now thanks to the teabaggers, the future consists of waiting for JAYYYYYZUS to come back!

[Posteritatis]

13. More like the funding sources are being infested with them

I don't know many astronomers, physicists, aerospace engineers, etc. who have much patience with that kind of thing.

[boppers]

7. We've discovered many new worlds....

None of them are habitable as far as we know, and there isn't much reason to send humans (or other animals) to visit.

[Crowman1979]

8. Well I think it would be best to having a mining industry on those uninhabited planets as opposed...

...to mining Earth IMO.

[boppers]

9. If it wasn't ridiculously expensive to do so, maybe?

It currently costs around $4,000 to lift a single pound into space. SpaceX is trying to drop that down, but you'd have to find something that so rare, or expensive, to mine, that getting to it, and sending it back, would be worth the astronomical (heh) transportation costs involved.

[AndyTiedye]

10. Never Mind Sending It Back, Mine it Up There To USE Up There

[boppers]

11. Such as... what?

Unobtanium?

[Crowman1979]

12. Well instead of planets, how about extracting minerals from space junk?

Or asteroids for that matter.

[TheMadMonk]

15. Actually making some fairly conservative assumptions, mining...

...in space should be extremely profitable.

Startup times and costs are very high. But even cost isn't the real sticker. It's the fact that the first return on investment won't come for 10 years or more and actual profit would be as much as 20 years in the future. However, when that profit came it would be enormous.

[Downwinder]

16. It's downhill from the moon.

[boppers]

17. Hm...

Some day, the platinum, cobalt and other valuable elements from asteroids may even be returned to Earth for profit. At 1997 prices, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1 mile (1.6 km) contains more than $20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals.<1> In fact, all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, rhenium, rhodium and ruthenium that we now mine from the Earth's crust, and that are essential for economic and technological progress, came originally from the rain of asteroids that hit the Earth after the crust cooled.<2><3>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining