The Astronomy Thread

Cybsled

Cybsled

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Nah, if anything he wants as much “mars test” shit as possible. The original waterless launch pad was probably that way because Mars launches can’t do that. And since it uses methane as fuel because in theory that is what they would be producing on Mars, he probably wants it similar to what it would be like if produced there
 
Big Phoenix

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Cybsled said:
It isn't so much that NASA is incapable, but that isn't their current directive. The shift to private industry post-Space Shuttle for LEO stuff started over a decade ago. NASA was then tasked with deep space stuff, so you had stuff like SLS. And ultimately the stuff that gets budgetary approval by Congress is the stuff that scratches the back of enough different states and districts.
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Theyve pretty much been like this since the Shuttle. Its been nothing more than a jobs program for certain politicians and senior management is just yes men to support that.
Cybsled said:
Nah, if anything he wants as much “mars test” shit as possible. The original waterless launch pad was probably that way because Mars launches can’t do that.
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Dunno about that. Two Starship with 33 engines isnt launching off Mars, just the second stage with far fewer engines.
 
meStevo

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NASA demonstrated working laser communication w/ the experiment on board the Psyche asteroid mission.

Along for the ride is the Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, or DSOC, which is carrying out a mission of its own during the first two years of the journey.​
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The tech demo was designed to be the US space agency’s most distant experiment of high-bandwidth laser communications, testing the sending and receiving of data to and from Earth using an invisible near-infrared laser. The laser can send data at 10 to 100 times the speed of traditional radio wave systems NASA uses on other missions. If wholly successful over the next couple of years, this experiment could be the future basis of technology that is used to communicate with humans exploring Mars.​
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And DSOC recently achieved what engineers called “first light,” the feat of successfully sending and receiving its first data.​
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The experiment beamed a laser encoded with data from far beyond the moon for the first time. The test data was sent from nearly 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) away and reached the Hale Telescope at the California Institute of Technology’s Palomar Observatory in Pasadena, California.​
 
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Gravel

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Aaron said:
NASA has done a lot of good shit, as mentioned above, but the thing to remember is that most of this shit is multi-decade stuff. Take the New Horizons probe. The first stages of planning go back to the early 90s. Then you have years of preliminary design before it gets the green light, then years of final planning and building, then it's launched in 2006, takes a decade to reach it's destination, then another decade of working the data. That's three decades of work.

James Webb started planning in 1996, and so on. A lot of the stuff we are seeing being done now and over the past 10 years were planned in the 90s when NASA was a very different beast, and diversity hiring not a main feature. Now think about the stuff that is in planning now by diversity hires and won't be operational for another 20 years. Is it going to work as well and for as long as the stuff we have now that is from the 80s and 90s? Who knows.
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Which is all just a bunch of examples of why government is completely inefficient at everything and worthless for accomplishing a task.

Eliminate all the bureaucracy and maybe they accomplish something? But maybe not. And since private has absolutely demolished them in both time and cost, maybe it's time we start closing a bunch of these government agencies down.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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The problem isn't NASA, the problem is their mandate changes with each administration and at the whims of what Congress agrees to fund.

NASA gets a budget, but what that budget gets spent on/prioritized on is out of their hands for the most part. If the current administration wants them to go to the moon as a priority, for example, then the majority of funding goes there and less goes to stuff like probes or telescopes or whatever. And of course cost overruns can eat up more of that budget.

SpaceX is great, but they also have the luxury of only needing to focus on a few main things.

On a side note, The Dragonfly project better not be canceled. I want a flying drone on Titan taking a fuckton of images and traveling around the moon. That will be so fucking amazing if it works.
 
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Gravel

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You're just giving more examples of why NASA and other government bureaucracies shouldn't exist.

So yes, the problem is NASA.
 
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Cybsled

Cybsled

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Bureaucracies are annoying, but something like NASA needs governmental backing for long term goals and work. Private industry really doesn't work for pure science related stuff like NASA does. You can make a business case for stuff like orbital launches and maybe habitats on the moon/orbit/etc eventually. You can't for stuff like probes sent to planets or things like Hubble/James Webb unless you're contracted to build the probes/telescopes by NASA.

Besides, NASA has always been great for ROI. It's never been a money sink in the long run and has had positive economic impacts in many states.
 
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