Not only has the Ares 1 already had it first test flight. I am here saying, on record, that the Dragon will not fly until at least 2020, if ever.

SpaceX is a joke of a company.

Do you know how simple the falcon 1 is? And they only have a 2/5 record with it. While most modern rocket systems, which have far greater abilities, designed in the last 20 years have perfect records.

The Flacon 9 is much more complex, SpaceX will take a decade to get it right.

Asking SpaceX to get a man to LEO is like asking the Wright Brothers to fly you across the Atlantic.

No, what you listed are things that only NASA can do, and are the things that NASA should be doing.

The "scientific bloat" is the billions of dollars a year NASA spends on research that could be carried out at any university for half the cost or for free(to the tax payer) by industry.

Yes, Stoop Kid has been afraid to leave his stoop since the early 70s. But NASA once demonstrated its abilities to achieve whatever it set its collective mind to.

Just Russia for the time being. But China's manned lifter, Shenzhou, is more capable than the Soyuz and probably cheaper once it goes into production.

To me Obama's plan sounds like this

'Here is a bunch of money, more than you usually get. I want you to spend it, but I don't want you to do anything with it.'

Which is essentially how the rest of the scientific community works. But there are thousands of Universities and private labs who already do that work.

NASA is the only organization in the world that can do what it did, manned exploration of the universe.

Why don't we leave aimless R&D to academia and let NASA do what it can.

If you got rid of all the scientific bloat on NASA's budget there would be plenty of money for moon and mars, and science will follow.

 

What better way to learn how to live with dwindling resources here on earth than learning to live in a place with NO RESOURCES!

The possible environmentally important spin-off technologies from a moon/mars mission are endless

Advanced hydroponics
Advance carbon dioxide filtering techniques
Learning how to grow food in mineral-less soil

Think of Mars or the Moon as a laboratory.

If we can figure out how to live there, we can possibly figure out what it takes to live in harmony with any environment, even our own.

PLUS when you say waste of resources, what do you mean? Money? NASA budget is minuscule to the amount of money the US government throws away. Scientist? Aerospace engineers don't care about environmental science, it isn't their field, it is not like you will be keeping them from solving terrestrial problems by having them work on spacecraft.

Couldn't this be tweaked and used as a method of hibernation to stave off boredom and conserve supplies for long duration space flight?

So when is the next Dirk Gently book going to be written. Someone should finish A Salmon of doubt.

The first Dirk book was 10x better than any of the HH books

These rules are probably in place because after people come down from their drug trips they are horrified to see naked pictures of themselves on the internet. I am sure the naked woman dancing at burning man on its wikipedia.org page probably isn't thrilled to have that honour.

These rules are probably in place because after people come down from their drug trips they are horrified to see naked pictures of themselves on the internet. I am sure the naked woman dancing at burning man on its wikipedia.org page probably isn't thrilled to have that honour.

I tend to believe it is warfare not genetics.

Both Japan and Europe at one point in time had the feudal system.

When you have hundreds of sovereign neighbors who want to kill you it gives you good motivation to develop educational instututions which help you develop both hard and soft power through innovation.

Probably also why the greek city staes had a reputation for innovation.

Meanwhile the African tribes were lucky to ever even come in contact with each other and never needed to develop educational institutions.

Instead of recreating a human brain why don't they figure out how to wire a processor into the human brain to improve it.

I could use a built in graphing calculator or spell check.

We should mount a robotic mission to this place right away.

There was a chain of porn shops around Baltimore called "The Shack" so the name will have some hilarious connotations here.

IMO the larger distrobutions, such as Ubuntu and Red Hat, can be even more inuitive to use than Windows. No "advanced" certifications required.