Northrop and Boeing were expected to win the contract to build the ‘Orion’ moon module because they ran the Apollo program in the 1960‘s. They have experience moon landing. The contract for the 8.1 billion dollar contract ended up with Lockheed-Martin on August 31, 2006.
We could probably chalk it all up to Mike Griffin. Who is he?
He walked into the White House on 9/15/2005 and presented his plan to replace the dangerous space shuttle. Two of the shuttles disintegrated and exploded killing their occupants.
Mike Griffin is a rocket scientist and has a Masters Degree in Business Administration.
That may be why his new plan is to use rockets to replace the poorly designed shuttles. It may also be why approval was given without any figures or information on how to pay for it.
Griffin’s new fleet of rockets will be a rework of rockets used during the moon shots in the 1960’s.
The rockets will draw on design information and experience the United States has had in building and deploying nuclear weapons.
Mike Griffin served as CEO of In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is described by it’s first CEO Gilman Louie as being formed "...to ensure that the CIA remains at the cutting edge of information technology advances and capabilities."
Mike Griffin is taking NASA ‘Back to the Past’.
Several board members of In-Q-Tel apparently have connections with Lockheed-Martin Corporation.
Why should we continue to pay these folks to do this? What happened to the NASA we used to know?
Full Version: NASA and the CIA
It became a bureaucracy instead of a cutting edge scientific institution. Instead of more science, NASA devoted itself to 'more budget', which is what bureaucracies do.
The whole idea of rockets is so 20th century, anyone who puts a penny into it is stoooopid.
Redstone has pretty much worked out the Ion grill, so interplantery space flight is a practical proposition. The problem is getting out of the gravity well.
Chemical explosions are NOT the answer. NASA needs to put 75% of it's budget into some of the hair-brained ideas for getting into orbit. Granted 99% of those ideas will be a waste of money, but all we need is one to work and it will payoff the rest.
LEO manufacturing is the next 'industial revolution'. The wealth that will be created is almost unimaginable. The only thing in the way is the lack of CHEAP earth to Orbit technology.
Here is a forum that discusses a 'space elevator'
http://www.liftport.com/forums/index.php?
Laugh if you will, but space elevators are just a matter of time and materiels research. Work that won't be done as long as the CEV and Shuttle are sucking up the funding.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...t_001103-1.html
Laser boost is another possibility that needs to be worked on. This was a 10Kw Laser. The THEL delivers 1.5 MW.
Then there is gravity nulification.
I know, this is some far out stuff. Not as far out as traveling from DC to London and then back again in the same day was in 1906. If the Concord was still flying you could do that today. Please note that it was economics that killed the Concord, not a lack of technology.
I expect the actual replacement for Rockets is none of the above, but rocket swill be replaced. The more money we waste on the shuttle today, the longer it will take to find a replacement for the rocket.
It is time for some tough love.
NASA needs to be put down.
The whole idea of rockets is so 20th century, anyone who puts a penny into it is stoooopid.
Redstone has pretty much worked out the Ion grill, so interplantery space flight is a practical proposition. The problem is getting out of the gravity well.
Chemical explosions are NOT the answer. NASA needs to put 75% of it's budget into some of the hair-brained ideas for getting into orbit. Granted 99% of those ideas will be a waste of money, but all we need is one to work and it will payoff the rest.
LEO manufacturing is the next 'industial revolution'. The wealth that will be created is almost unimaginable. The only thing in the way is the lack of CHEAP earth to Orbit technology.
Here is a forum that discusses a 'space elevator'
http://www.liftport.com/forums/index.php?
Laugh if you will, but space elevators are just a matter of time and materiels research. Work that won't be done as long as the CEV and Shuttle are sucking up the funding.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...t_001103-1.html
Laser boost is another possibility that needs to be worked on. This was a 10Kw Laser. The THEL delivers 1.5 MW.
Then there is gravity nulification.
I know, this is some far out stuff. Not as far out as traveling from DC to London and then back again in the same day was in 1906. If the Concord was still flying you could do that today. Please note that it was economics that killed the Concord, not a lack of technology.
I expect the actual replacement for Rockets is none of the above, but rocket swill be replaced. The more money we waste on the shuttle today, the longer it will take to find a replacement for the rocket.
It is time for some tough love.
NASA needs to be put down.
QUOTE
The rockets will draw on design information and experience the United States has had in building and deploying nuclear weapons.
WTF are you talkng about???? A nuke missile carries a fraction of the payload of a manned orbital flight. Nuke missiles are sub orbital and are fueled by solid propellent. And HTF is deploying our nukes in silos, subs and bombers giving us experience for manned spaceflight?????? You got it backwards son. The advances in US spaceflight enhanced our nuke missle capability. Who taught you how to think anyway?????
QUOTE (sea_of_red @ Aug 31 2006, 07:26 PM) 
It became a bureaucracy instead of a cutting edge scientific institution. Instead of more science, NASA devoted itself to 'more budget', which is what bureaucracies do.
The whole idea of rockets is so 20th century, anyone who puts a penny into it is stoooopid.
Redstone has pretty much worked out the Ion grill, so interplantery space flight is a practical proposition. The problem is getting out of the gravity well.
Chemical explosions are NOT the answer. NASA needs to put 75% of it's budget into some of the hair-brained ideas for getting into orbit. Granted 99% of those ideas will be a waste of money, but all we need is one to work and it will payoff the rest.
LEO manufacturing is the next 'industial revolution'. The wealth that will be created is almost unimaginable. The only thing in the way is the lack of CHEAP earth to Orbit technology.
Here is a forum that discusses a 'space elevator'
http://www.liftport.com/forums/index.php?
Laugh if you will, but space elevators are just a matter of time and materiels research. Work that won't be done as long as the CEV and Shuttle are sucking up the funding.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...t_001103-1.html
Laser boost is another possibility that needs to be worked on. This was a 10Kw Laser. The THEL delivers 1.5 MW.
Then there is gravity nulification.
I know, this is some far out stuff. Not as far out as traveling from DC to London and then back again in the same day was in 1906. If the Concord was still flying you could do that today. Please note that it was economics that killed the Concord, not a lack of technology.
I expect the actual replacement for Rockets is none of the above, but rocket swill be replaced. The more money we waste on the shuttle today, the longer it will take to find a replacement for the rocket.
It is time for some tough love.
NASA needs to be put down.
The whole idea of rockets is so 20th century, anyone who puts a penny into it is stoooopid.
Redstone has pretty much worked out the Ion grill, so interplantery space flight is a practical proposition. The problem is getting out of the gravity well.
Chemical explosions are NOT the answer. NASA needs to put 75% of it's budget into some of the hair-brained ideas for getting into orbit. Granted 99% of those ideas will be a waste of money, but all we need is one to work and it will payoff the rest.
LEO manufacturing is the next 'industial revolution'. The wealth that will be created is almost unimaginable. The only thing in the way is the lack of CHEAP earth to Orbit technology.
Here is a forum that discusses a 'space elevator'
http://www.liftport.com/forums/index.php?
Laugh if you will, but space elevators are just a matter of time and materiels research. Work that won't be done as long as the CEV and Shuttle are sucking up the funding.
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/te...t_001103-1.html
Laser boost is another possibility that needs to be worked on. This was a 10Kw Laser. The THEL delivers 1.5 MW.
Then there is gravity nulification.
I know, this is some far out stuff. Not as far out as traveling from DC to London and then back again in the same day was in 1906. If the Concord was still flying you could do that today. Please note that it was economics that killed the Concord, not a lack of technology.
I expect the actual replacement for Rockets is none of the above, but rocket swill be replaced. The more money we waste on the shuttle today, the longer it will take to find a replacement for the rocket.
It is time for some tough love.
NASA needs to be put down.
And another load of manure here.
The only way to get a substantial payload into orbit at this time is by "Chemical explosions". That will not change in our lifetimes given the moribund elitism of the scientific community.
The shuttle has flown 113 successful missions. There have been 2 failures. The first failure of the booster O rings has been remedied. What mystifies me is that almost 3 years after the second failure a solution has not been found. Pardon the pun but this is not rocket science here. You got insulation on the main fuel tank to keep it from iceing and that foam falls off. This is a design flaw. Either redesign the the fuel tank or redesign the vunerable parts of the wing. IT CAN BE DONE FOR ALOT LESS MONEY THEN BUILDING A NEW ORBITOR. This is kinda like Henry Ford abandoning the Model-T because he couldn't get the fuel pump to work. Fn unreal.................................
Nasa hopes to catch an elevator to space
US scientists compete to find technology that could replace costly rockets
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday September 3, 2006
The Observer
In a few weeks, scientists from across the world will gather in the New Mexico desert to compete for one of the strangest - and most ambitious - technological competitions ever devised.
Some researchers will unveil robots, powered by solar panels, that will climb long lengths of cable. Others will demonstrate materials so light and strong that mile-long stretches of the stuff could be hung in the air without snapping. And some will highlight their plans to launch satellites carrying sets of mini-probes tethered together, to discover how they behave in space.
All these different projects are united by one extraordinary goal: to build a stairway to heaven. Each of the groups that will gather in New Mexico is competing to win a Nasa prize set up to encourage entrepreneurs to start development work on the technology needed to create a space elevator. Such a device would involve constructing a 23,000-mile cable that could pull men and goods into orbit without blasting them there on top of expensive, and dangerous, rockets.
'I think there are going to be lots of people that rise to this challenge,' said Michael Laine, president of the Washington-based company LiftPort, which will take part in the competition. 'We're at the beginning of something really great.'
The key feature of a space elevator would be the use of a satellite that will orbit almost 23,000 miles above Earth. At this altitude, known as geostationary orbit, the orbital period of a satellite moving around the globe matches Earth's rotation. The craft then hovers over a single spot on the equator.
However, a space elevator would have one extra key feature: a massive cable would be lowered from it to link it to the ground where it would remain fixed, like a tube line to the stars.
It sounds like science fiction. And indeed for the past 30 years that is how most people have viewed the concept of a space elevator, after the idea - originally put forward by the Russian scientist Yuri Artsutanov in 1960 - was made famous by Arthur C Clarke in his 1978 novel, The Fountains of Paradise. At the time the book's ideas were praised for their soundness, though scientists noted that the incredibly strong materials needed to build a space elevator were well beyond the technology of the day.
But science has made enormous advances since 1978, particularly in the development of incredibly light but strong substances that could be used to construct the space elevator cable. In particular, the development of carbon nanotubes - made of highly robust webs of carbon atoms - have raised the promise that a space elevator may one day become reality.
And for Nasa that cannot come a moment too soon. Despite decades of putting rockets into space, the agency has never managed to make any real reductions in launch costs in that time. Hence its decision to back a competition to stimulate space elevator technology. 'With a space elevator, Nasa could build probes that they weren't able to do before; they could do new research on different applications of the space elevator,' said Bradley Edwards, an entrepreneur who played a key role in helping to set up the space elevator competition.
Several US companies and groups of university researchers, plus Canadian, German and Spanish scientists, have promised to bring their devices and put them through their paces at next month's space elevator competition. Prizes will be worth more than $400,000 in total, including one for a robot that will have to climb a 60-metre cable powered only by photovoltaic cells, and another for the creation of tether lighter and stronger than those made of materials now available commercially.
It promises to be a close-run thing. As New Scientist magazine reported last week, the best performing robot last year managed an ascent of only 12 metres up a cable before it stalled, while no material came close to meeting the standards needed for building a space elevator. In short, we may have to wait a little bit longer than anticipated to build that stairway to heaven.
US scientists compete to find technology that could replace costly rockets
Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday September 3, 2006
The Observer
In a few weeks, scientists from across the world will gather in the New Mexico desert to compete for one of the strangest - and most ambitious - technological competitions ever devised.
Some researchers will unveil robots, powered by solar panels, that will climb long lengths of cable. Others will demonstrate materials so light and strong that mile-long stretches of the stuff could be hung in the air without snapping. And some will highlight their plans to launch satellites carrying sets of mini-probes tethered together, to discover how they behave in space.
All these different projects are united by one extraordinary goal: to build a stairway to heaven. Each of the groups that will gather in New Mexico is competing to win a Nasa prize set up to encourage entrepreneurs to start development work on the technology needed to create a space elevator. Such a device would involve constructing a 23,000-mile cable that could pull men and goods into orbit without blasting them there on top of expensive, and dangerous, rockets.
'I think there are going to be lots of people that rise to this challenge,' said Michael Laine, president of the Washington-based company LiftPort, which will take part in the competition. 'We're at the beginning of something really great.'
The key feature of a space elevator would be the use of a satellite that will orbit almost 23,000 miles above Earth. At this altitude, known as geostationary orbit, the orbital period of a satellite moving around the globe matches Earth's rotation. The craft then hovers over a single spot on the equator.
However, a space elevator would have one extra key feature: a massive cable would be lowered from it to link it to the ground where it would remain fixed, like a tube line to the stars.
It sounds like science fiction. And indeed for the past 30 years that is how most people have viewed the concept of a space elevator, after the idea - originally put forward by the Russian scientist Yuri Artsutanov in 1960 - was made famous by Arthur C Clarke in his 1978 novel, The Fountains of Paradise. At the time the book's ideas were praised for their soundness, though scientists noted that the incredibly strong materials needed to build a space elevator were well beyond the technology of the day.
But science has made enormous advances since 1978, particularly in the development of incredibly light but strong substances that could be used to construct the space elevator cable. In particular, the development of carbon nanotubes - made of highly robust webs of carbon atoms - have raised the promise that a space elevator may one day become reality.
And for Nasa that cannot come a moment too soon. Despite decades of putting rockets into space, the agency has never managed to make any real reductions in launch costs in that time. Hence its decision to back a competition to stimulate space elevator technology. 'With a space elevator, Nasa could build probes that they weren't able to do before; they could do new research on different applications of the space elevator,' said Bradley Edwards, an entrepreneur who played a key role in helping to set up the space elevator competition.
Several US companies and groups of university researchers, plus Canadian, German and Spanish scientists, have promised to bring their devices and put them through their paces at next month's space elevator competition. Prizes will be worth more than $400,000 in total, including one for a robot that will have to climb a 60-metre cable powered only by photovoltaic cells, and another for the creation of tether lighter and stronger than those made of materials now available commercially.
It promises to be a close-run thing. As New Scientist magazine reported last week, the best performing robot last year managed an ascent of only 12 metres up a cable before it stalled, while no material came close to meeting the standards needed for building a space elevator. In short, we may have to wait a little bit longer than anticipated to build that stairway to heaven.
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