Make up your mind NASA...

[Wing Nut]

First it's get a new Shuttle, then it's go to the Moon, now it's a new Shuttle again...

NASA Names New Shuttle a Priority

Personally, I think NASA is so totally screwed up right now, they may just want to junk the whole agency and privatize space flight for good.  These people should have been working on replacing this 1st generation Shuttle for the last 10 years, but they have screwed around moaning about it and now it's coming back to bite them.  They knew the Shuttle was going downhill fast, but they decided it 'was too expensive' and just kept putting it off.  Do you think Richard Branson or Steve Allen would have allowed crap like this happen?  I don't.

[Omag 2.0]

Why not combine the 2 ideas? Build a shuttle-like carrier that can hold a moonlander... Sigh... Don't they have like a legion of engineers overthere? ... wait... that might actually be the problem....  ;D

[ATI_7500]

Personally, I think NASA is so totally screwed up right now, they may just want to junk the whole agency and privatize space flight for good.

Senseless moneymaking and unloading their crap into space? No, thank you.

[RichieB16]

I honestly don't see why they shouldn't just keep the current STS Space Shuttle in service for a while longer and develop a new system.

[Katahu]

The shuttle has always provided the safest ride possible to space. Look at how early Saturn V rockets started. The SatV configurations tended to blow up or miscalculate more times than I can pump air into the tires of my bicycle. The Shuttle only had 2 accidents out its entire history and yet many people see that as more problematic than the Sat V configurations. :-/

It's sad really.

I have always looked up to the shuttle. Therefore, I will continue to look up to it and give it my deepest respect even long after its planned retirement. Why? Like the Wright Flyer of 1903 [however crappy it was], it will always be remember as the first vehicle with wings to achieve the impossible. Therefore, it won't matter if the next new shuttle has better technology: the old shuttle will forever hold the title as did the Wright Flyer.

*Katahu salutes at the old shuttle*

[RichieB16]

The SatV configurations tended to blow up or miscalculate more times than I can pump air into the tires of my bicycle. The Shuttle only had 2 accidents out its entire history and yet many people see that as more problematic than the Sat V configurations.

Actually, the Saturn V never had a major launch issue (at least the "Saturn V").

[Hagar]

Senseless moneymaking and unloading their crap into space? No, thank you.

So, what's new about that?

[ATI_7500]

So, what's new about that?

The fact that it would be uncontrolled from there on.

[ozzy72]

If they sacked ALL the middle management and health & safety monkeys I reckon NASA could be back in business as they'd have the few managers left knowing the mission and everyone else building the damn things they need!!!!!

[beaky]

Seems they're already planning more complexity into the next vehicle than they need to...
I still think they'd be better off going dirt-simple, for now, with surface-to-orbit systems for shuttling people and materials to and from the ISS, while more slowly working on a solid plan to build a permanent base (however small, and not necessarily manned full-time) on the Moon. Or maybe leave the Earth-orbit  stuff to the Russians (and soon the Chinese?). Or  just buy tickets for their crews from Virgin...
Everything NASA needs to do to get regular trips to Mars going , and establish a base there, can be figured out by starting this way.  It'd make more sense to have a big ship, capable of carrying landers, etc. (and never being intended to return to Earth's surface), operating between Earth orbit and the Moon, and later have one operating between lunar orbit and Mars. No doubt the current shuttle design could easily be tweaked to allow it to make lunar voyages, but I don't see the point... this will lead to compromises that will diminish such a craft's usefullness for both modes of operation. It will also be very expensive: I think one of NASA's top priorities should be figuring out how to take some of the controversy out of budgeting manned missions.
 New, simple orbit-only ships should support the ISS, and ISS should be used to support lunar and maybe Martian missions. A lot of work needs to be done on ISS to get to the point where Moon and Mars ships can be assembled and launched from Earth orbit, but it'd be a better way to go, in the long run.
Other than providing inspiration, the Apollo crews weren't really necessary, when you think about it ... people shouldn't be going to the Moon and Mars just to plant flags, take pictures,collect samples and deploy experimental packages.  NASA really shines (technically and fiscally)  when it comes to doing all of that robotically- why develop a huge expensive manned program unless a real human foothold will be established? If people aren't going to live and work on other worlds, the risk and expense isn't justified, IMHO, just for the satisfaction of setting foot there. Besides, there will never be another moment quite like the first bootprint being made on another world... as much as the human experience of the Apollo crews changed humanity's collective outlook, that impact will likely never be felt again. It's time to get some real useful work done in space!
It just seems more sensible to me to try to integrate all of the mission-specific hardware and techniques into an overall plan of expanding humanity's reach- moving outward without falling back.

[Hagar]

If I only believed that this is all for purely scientific purposes or simply for the sake of curiosity & exploration I might be able to summon up a little more enthusiasm. I usually try steering clear of this topic as I believe the whole purpose of NASA finished when the first man stepped on the Moon back in 1969. Since then it's lost its way & this unwieldy & inefficient (dare I say incompetent) organisation's main purpose seems to have been in justifying its own existence to the long-suffering taxpayer.

[RichieB16]

Since then it's lost its way & this unwieldy & inefficient (dare I say incompetent) organisation's main purpose seems to have been in justifying its own existence to the long-suffering taxpayer.

You may be suprised, but Doug I whole heartedly agree with this.  Ever since they landed Apollo 11 on the moon they have simply been trying to make it appear they are worth the money that they get.  You know that I am very interested in space flight, but for the last 30 years or so they really haven't made any progress.  

I would actually say that through 1972 (the end of the Apollo program) they did an excellent job with their mission of exploration.  Although they made some mistakes back then, one big one that comes to mind is that only 1 scientist was ever sent to the moon.  The first 5 landing missions were carried out only by military crews.  Now, I'm sure that there were military objectives of these missions but science was also a major objective.  The fact that they had to rearrange the crews at the last minute so a geologist flew on one of the missions (the final mission to be exact) is pretty hard to believe for me.  The geologist was assigned to fly with Apollo 18 but when 18 was cancelled the scientific community flipped out so NASA bumped him up to Apollo 17 and he flew then.

But, after the Apollo program not much seemed to happen.  We had a space station (Skylab) that had all of 3 missions to it (and the major reason for that was because Russia had launched one and we wanted to show that we could to).  It was very inexpensive (suprisingly) but not much was accomplished.  Then it reentered uncontrolled over India.

The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project was nothing more than a political game (US and USSR docking), nothing really special there.

Then was the space shuttle program, which is an amazing vehicle.  The only problem is the shuttle was originally designed as a reusable space station ferry and supply ship as its main use.  The shuttle first flew in 1981 and by the time that we finally got around to manning a space ststaion for it, it was 1999 and the shuttle was almost obsolite.  So, dispite the shuttle's amazing ablities, to me it is almost another blunder.

So, I feel that all of these programs were nothing more than NASA trying to justify its existance.  Skylab used Apollo technology to build a cheap space station to keep us in space until the shuttle was ready and continue to compete with the USSR.  When the shuttle finally arrived, there was no space station for it to use.  So, they flew a lot of different types of missions in the hopes of getting things done.  Although a lot was learned, the original purpose for the program seems to have been forgotten.

What I think NASA needs to do is set ONE goal for its manned space program.  Once that goal is set (either low earth orbit space station work, moon landings, or Mars) and plan the program solely around that.  Build a new ship for that purpose and go for it.  They have too many things on their plate that nothing is getting done and as a result they are simply wasting money.  When they set their sites on simply landing a man on the moon, NASA was amazingly successiful and heavily supported.  Although there is no major political drive for such a goal, it still seems that setting one universal goal for the manned space program is the only way that they will have any successiful exporation.

Sorry for rambling.  

[Hagar]

[quote]
You may be suprised, but Doug I whole heartedly agree with this.

[RichieB16]

Your right, the motives for putting a man on the moon was primarily political-to get their by the end of the decade (and, although never admitted by any government offical-to beat the Russians).

[Hagar]

[quote]It is true that NASA has very strong political and military influences (that is why there have been so many "Department of Defense" shuttle missions inwhich almost everything is classified) but once Apollo had made those first couple landings, all the political and military importance in the program was over.