should nasa still run the space agency in america

i cant track down all the info ive gotten from about nasa. but they are the reason its taken so long to get things moving in space. they had the funds in the 70's and 80's for what is happening now. they even had all the tech they needed to prove it. but they were busy on vanity projects. do you feel nasa should be trusted to run the next age of space racing? i personally think someone should step in and move things forward in a direction of human habitation rather than have whom ever spend all this time digging back into earth with a satillite or some project to map the moon(we went there what more do you want). should nasa be allowed to continue to spend tax money on projects that wont put a private cit in space?

good question, but beside all the "space walking" I see one big advances coming out of it, research, if not for space, there would have been many things missing or still waiting to be discovered, the list is long, fist thing that springs to mind (on the RIU forum) beside insulation, titanium and carbon is LED lights ..


p.s.

they should let me run it we will be harvesting oil in asteroid belt within 20 years.

then I want to live on the Moon and grow Auto`s on the bright side

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/12/mars-rover-driver-leaves-the-steering-wheel/?hpt=hp_t4

the dude who is driving the mars rover is leaving nasa for google. odd huh? nasa cant pull it off. they are not interested in space but just shoving money in the idea of exploring it. pictures,data(w/e that means) , and it seems to be all thye want. look at this chart,or picture. look at this. we have all we need to get people up there and going. we dont need more records to prove it. money needs to be put into getting up there where humans can use tools to go threw the data right then and there. a robot cant do what a human can!

polyarcturus said:

they should let me run it we will be harvesting oil in asteroid belt within 20 years.

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OIL? from dead animals and plants in space? LOL

NASA should always be around, IMO. That being said, I do think that private industries will most likely be the new pioneers of space. Entities like NASA still spurs competition, and we all know thats what got us into space in the first place.

silasraven said:

http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/12/mars-rover-driver-leaves-the-steering-wheel/?hpt=hp_t4

the dude who is driving the mars rover is leaving nasa for google. odd huh? nasa cant pull it off. they are not interested in space but just shoving money in the idea of exploring it. pictures,data(w/e that means) , and it seems to be all thye want. look at this chart,or picture. look at this. we have all we need to get people up there and going. we dont need more records to prove it. money needs to be put into getting up there where humans can use tools to go threw the data right then and there. a robot cant do what a human can!

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I don;t believe our technology is ready for 'Human' exploration of space. ... I give it 100 years before we are able t develope the necessary life supporting systems, fuel and material technology and global cooperation needed for any meaningful space travel.

jmo

Moebius said:

I don;t believe our technology is ready for 'Human' exploration of space. ... I give it 100 years before we are able t develope the necessary life supporting systems, fuel and material technology and global cooperation needed for any meaningful space travel.

jmo

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i agree but disagree, the money is there and so it the tech, the issue is where the people with money have their heads at beside up their asses they just dont want to invest in space.
okay maybe not oil, but its a shit ton of hydrocabons that have been under immense amounts conditions.(referring to titan, asteroids more of a joke, but in short there is fuel in space.)

polyarcturus said:

i agree but disagree, the money is there and so it the tech, the issue is where the people with money have their heads at beside up their asses they just dont want to invest in space.
okay maybe not oil, but its a shit ton of hydrocabons that have been under immense amounts conditions.(referring to titan, asteroids more of a joke, but in short there is fuel in space.)

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Yes, its called the Sun.

there is also material for nuclear reactors.

Hydrocarbons are so 1980's. Who wants a spaceship with an exhaust pipe?

PeyoteReligion said:

NASA should always be around, IMO. That being said, I do think that private industries will most likely be the new pioneers of space. Entities like NASA still spurs competition, and we all know thats what got us into space in the first place.

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+1
NASA will and should continue with the projects they get and the private sector will be there to push the boundary further. NASA probably doesn't need to send anyone else into space, they should concentrate on the types of missions they have been doing, all of the mars landers, the space telescopes, STEREO observer and other hard science projects. For the amount of public money we have spent, we get tremendous gains, more so than other federal programs.

There's a private company very serious about going to Mars in 2023. Fox news called it a suicide mission lol

Slipon said:

then I want to live on the Moon and grow Auto`s on the bright side

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you are aware that every portion of the moon gets sunlight right?

the "dark side" is only "dark" because it always faces away from us here on earth. it receives the same 28 day photoperiod as the earth facing side.

Moebius said:

Yes, its called the Sun.

there is also material for nuclear reactors.

Hydrocarbons are so 1980's. Who wants a spaceship with an exhaust pipe?

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my space cruiser has gotta have a Hemi.

and not the new "hemi" brand motors, i mean a classic 458 hemispherical combustion chamber MONSTER that you can supercharge up to 9 atmospheres before you even start the compression stroke.

without the power, torque and compression you cant get better than a 4 second 1/4 mile, much less hit light speed.

to beat light speed we're gonna need a nitrous system and 99.8% methyl alcohol race fuel.

Dr Kynes said:

you are aware that every portion of the moon gets sunlight right?

the "dark side" is only "dark" because it always faces away from us here on earth. it receives the same 28 day photoperiod as the earth facing side.

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It's not even called the dark side but the far side. There are some areas near the southern pole that receive almost constant sunlight. This is the area that would be most suitable to create large solar panels from the regolith and beam the energy back to earth using microwaves.

mindphuk said:

It's not even called the dark side but the far side. There are some areas near the southern pole that receive almost constant sunlight. This is the area that would be most suitable to create large solar panels from the regolith and beam the energy back to earth using microwaves.

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meh, it used to be called the dark side (see pink floyd for more details) and some people still think the sun never shines on some parts of the moon.


i didnt wanna confuse the issue with the moon's axial tilt, and tidal locking. at the moons equator it's 28 days per diurnal cycle, and thats good enough for government work.


also, energy beaming via microwaves....

dude, we would have halfcooked ducks and seagulls falling from the sky wherever that beam was directed, and the energy loss to the megentosphere, and the atmosphere would be catastrophic. the beam would have to be directed at the middle of the antarctic for safety, and it will still be inefficient as fuck.

geothermal turbines, and various nuclear power plants are the way to go


lunar solar energy could power lunar bases, but i doubt it would ever be feasible for terrestrial power generation.

Dr Kynes said:

meh, it used to be called the dark side (see pink floyd for more details) and some people still think the sun never shines on some parts of the moon.


i didnt wanna confuse the issue with the moon's axial tilt, and tidal locking. at the moons equator it's 28 days per diurnal cycle, and thats good enough for government work.


also, energy beaming via microwaves....

dude, we would have halfcooked ducks and seagulls falling from the sky wherever that beam was directed, and the energy loss to the megentosphere, and the atmosphere would be catastrophic. the beam would have to be directed at the middle of the antarctic for safety, and it will still be inefficient as fuck.

geothermal turbines, and various nuclear power plants are the way to go


lunar solar energy could power lunar bases, but i doubt it would ever be feasible for terrestrial power generation.

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If not microwaves, then lasers.
I'm pretty sure that people call it the dark side because of Pink Floyd, not because it was ever considered a proper term by astronomers, but meh.

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_moon_as_a_solar_power_sattelite.shtml
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-8/iss-5/p28.pdf
http://www.shimz.co.jp/english/theme/dream/lunaring.html

Dr Kynes said:

also, energy beaming via microwaves....

dude, we would have halfcooked ducks and seagulls falling from the sky

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LOL, that's a good one doc

Microwaves aren't the same as the energy used to vibrate water molecules in your "microwave oven". Yes microwave ovens do use microwaves, but microwaves are just waves with very short wavelengths.

Microwaves are radio waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF (millimeter waves), and various sources use different boundaries.[SUP][3][/SUP] In all cases, microwave includes the entire SHF band (3 to 30 GHz, or 10 to 1 cm) at minimum, with RF engineering often putting the lower boundary at 1 GHz (30 cm), and the upper around 100 GHz (3 mm).

e;
Common use of microwaves is RADAR

fb360 said:

LOL, that's a good one doc

Microwaves aren't the same as the energy used to vibrate water molecules in your "microwave oven". Yes microwave ovens do use microwaves, but microwaves are just waves with very short wavelengths.

Microwaves are radio waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF (millimeter waves), and various sources use different boundaries.[SUP][3][/SUP] In all cases, microwave includes the entire SHF band (3 to 30 GHz, or 10 to 1 cm) at minimum, with RF engineering often putting the lower boundary at 1 GHz (30 cm), and the upper around 100 GHz (3 mm).

e;
Common use of microwaves is RADAR

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and a radar dish can kill a bird thats too close when if kicks on it's magnetron. it's not a problem with the frequency, its a problem with the power output.
even if the frequency was modulated so it didnt send your water molecules into an impromptu jitterbug, the radiation dose would be fatal, the heat from agitated local gasses and whatnot would sear off your beak, and we would still have fried ducks falling from the sky.

the energy output a microwave transmitter would need to blast through the atmosphere and deliver useful levels of energy for electrical generation would kill anything that passed through it, whether bird, insect or aircraft.

and lasers? dude thats not any better.

any radiological energy transmission with enough juice to deliver the gravy from the moon would be a "Death Ray"

are you Dr Evil? WTF?

when youre sending that much energy down in a tight beam, presumably enough to far exceed the energy received from the sun, youre gonna make HEAT as it agitates the local atmosphere in passing, and anything that crosses your "Death Ray" is gonna go down like the planet Alderan.

im not saying it's impossible, im saying i cant think of any way to get the energy from Up There to Down Here without creating either one motherfucker of an aerial hazard, or running a REALLY long extension cord.

thats why i reckon the "Death Ray" would have to be focused on antarctica or summat, where no jumbo jets, private pilots, or endangered golden condor is gonna bumble into the beam and have it's day ruined.

Dr Kynes said:

and a radar dish can kill a bird thats too close when if kicks on it's magnetron. it's not a problem with the frequency, its a problem with the power output.
even if the frequency was modulated so it didnt send your water molecules into an impromptu jitterbug, the radiation dose would be fatal, the heat from agitated local gasses and whatnot would sear off your beak, and we would still have fried ducks falling from the sky.

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you're absolutely correct about the power output.

Sending high energy between 2 points through open space is always going to have risk.