Check their video. It sounded like they wanted to put it in orbit around the Earth. Their video shows it parking out around SEL1, out where ACE is on the 16th year of it's 5 year gig.

So, they don't want to recover it. They just want to park it an awful long way from home. I misread TFS, and was trying to figure out how they'd design, build, and launch a recovery vehicle in 40 days. That would have been really cool though.

uniquilessnessishis?

You know I couldn't resist after a rant like that. :)

I want us to be as successful at controlling corruption as Canada and the Nordic countries.

I didn't know such a goal counts as science fiction.

I described a certain mindless cynic in my post. You are exactly such a loser. You are the problem.

so you want to be the poster child of exactly the sort of loser i am describing?

when i describe a pathetic attitude, it helps not to respond by exactly fitting the pathetic description

or perhaps canada is actually doing a much better job of controlling corruption

Well, what they're using now isn't exactly the safest either. Each generation of any technology improves on the last. Look at cars. In 1970s, when the shuttle design was finalized, you were rolling around in deathtraps. Now cars crumple on impact, airbags deploy all around us. We almost have auto-driving cars in the mainstream (i.e., they're doing road tests now).

If we knew nothing about the idea of cars, and engineers were requested to make every feature found in modern cars was requested, you'd get the same answer. "Impossible." Hell, you'd probably get the same answer in the 1970s.

The same applies to any technology. The PC you're using is nothing like a computer in 1974. I had prolonged arguments with people, who insisted that computers would never go up to 100MHz. They had all kinds of scientific reasons for it.

It's all up to figuring out how to do it. That takes time, it's not a one-shot deal.

i don't think canada is a utopia

i specifically said "canada and the nordic countries that, while not perfect, do a much better job"

every country has problems. and there is corruption in canada. but canada is doing a much better job of keeping corruption in check than the usa. we can demand better, we do not have to accept the lame status quo in the usa og basically legalized corruption such as with 2010 citizens united when the supremes basically betrayed the american people to corporations and plutocrats

doesn't mean i think we can defeat corruption forever. doesn't mean i think it will be easy. but we can, and should, get money out of politics to the best of our ability. and certainly not roll over and accept it and say "well, that's just the way it is." no, it's not just the way it is

Well, lets look at the federal budget, so we can judge on "extra tax dollars".

The 2015 spending budget is $6,293.7 billion.
NASA gets $16.6 billion, or 0.26%, or $52.13 per person.
Defense gets $820.2 billion or 13.1%, $2,575.37 per person.

The F-35 has $875 billion allocated to the project.

Our defense budget isn't just high. Our spending is 36% of the world's defense spending. The US spends about as much as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, India, and South Korea *combined*. If we reduced our military spending to the level of the country that spends the most (China), we could trim 452 billion from military spending, NASA could be paid 27 times over.

GE was paid about 10% of the NASA budget for avoiding paying taxes. The taxes they don't pay count for more than the entire NASA budget. GE makes most of it's money from the US government.

You know, I wouldn't mind 1% being dropped from killing people in other countries, or threatening to do it. I wouldn't mind if companies like GE weren't allowed to skip paying taxes, to reduce our tax burden, and double NASA's budget. I wouldn't mind if they skipped trying to build the F-35 fighter, and doubled NASA's budget.

So, which do you want? An airplane that we don't need? Wars that serve no good purposes? Paying corporations for avoiding taxes? Or to advance the knowledge and reach of the human species?

will be a bunch of cynical comments about this being just the way it is

but there are countries like canada and the nordic countries that, while not perfect, do a much better job of keeping money out of politics than the usa

cynicism is common, but i don't like it because people use it to think they have to lie down and accept this sort of legalized corruption

in many ways, i think the cynicism is worse than the malicious corporations. because there's always people who are robbing you in this world. you have defend yourself and fight them. but what can you say about people who roll over and take the abuse?

we don't have to accept it

and we start by changing the lame cynical attitudes out there

that might be you

that might mean speaking up when you hear cynicism and people snickering or nodding in agreement with it

for speaking up and say wallowing in mindless cynicism is a form of accepting the abuse and is part of the problem, you may get ridiculed and flak for that. but think about what kind of mindset is mocking you, and take it as a point of pride

we have to be the solution here. all of us. i didn't say it was easy. but i and many others are not going to continue to accept this, and i would hope more people would join us

start by losing the cynicism

You're totally right. People complain about the NASA budget, but they don't realize how insignificant it is compared to other things. We've spent (and continue to spend) far more on killing people (or the
threat of) in other countries.

NASA's budget is less than 0.4% of the federal budget. The bank bailout was more than has ever been spent on NASA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That's funny that you express that there's no reason to put people on Mars, but you quote Carl Sagan in your tagline.

I ran across this a few days ago.

http://io9.com/5932534/carl-sa...

Maybe you're there because we've recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and, while we're up in near-Earth space, it's only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we're on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we're on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we're on Mars because we have to be, because there's a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we've been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you're on Mars is, I'm glad you're there. And I wish I was with you.

Indeed. As explained by Barry Crocker and the Doug Anthony Allstars. ;-)

I have one thing to say. Hurry the fuck up.

When I was a kid, there was so much "by the year 2000". Space stations. Moon bases. Mars colonies. Mining asteroids. Deep space missions. Fleets of spacecraft. Hypersonic travel around the earth.

The only thing resembling a real space ship has been retired. 1960s tech is back as the best thing anyone can come up with, and it's totally owned by the Russians.

I am impressed by probes. They are cool toys. But they can't replace a person standing there, making decisions. Asking "what if..." We learn from being and doing. The rover we have on Mars now has a mostly busted wheel. A wheel that a human could have riveted a patch over in a few minutes. Or maybe some duct tape. You know, what the Apollo astronauts did, because they were there. Where humans can improvise, and grab a roll of tape.

If we hadn't given up on the space race, maybe we'd have most of those things. So we slacked for 20 years, lets get back on track.

Ah. Well, that's one of many. You'll also find "a person who chops wood", and the occasional uses of "a low quality writer" and "a taxi driver" Those last two are usually hacks, not hackers, but I've heard them referred to both ways.