Author Topic: Shuttle Discovery (Read 5848 times)

Revalis · « **Reply #15 on:** July 08, 2011, 08:05:56 pm »

Quote from: "Ketamininja"

If you guys are not spending cash on the shuttle programs for now (I know there is new technology planned if I recall), does this mean budget will be redirected somewhere.. more useful?

I had hoped they'd have more money to fund ME! But apparently, they won't... and where all my projects used to be vehicle focused (a la Constellation, Ares, LCROSS, etc) apparently now our mission directive is the 'human experience' in space.

The ISS falls under the directorate that I'm contracted with, though, so maybe I'll get some cool ISS-related projects... but the current list of experiments that are being done aren't very.. erm.. exciting. But apparently more robots are going to be sent up to accompany R2 and help take over the more menial maintenance tasks to free up the Astronauts to do more interesting things. Guess we'll see.

Edit:
Also worth mentioning, the US isn't giving up crew transport into space altogether. The task of building crew transport just moved to the private sector instead of the government sector. Supposedly NASA is supposed to focus on 'beyond Low-Earth Orbit' while commercial companies (i.e., SpaceX) focus on getting us TO LEO.
But until the commercial sector is ready, Russia is being nice enough to let us hitch a ride. ;)

Fuse · « **Reply #16 on:** July 09, 2011, 03:28:20 pm »

Quote from: "Revalis"

But until the commercial sector is ready, Russia is being smart enough to take our money.

Fixed.

Paitryn · « **Reply #17 on:** July 13, 2011, 06:42:25 am »

I think that privatization has been long overdue for LEO. I am curious as to how they plan to tackle deep space exploration projects. forgo earth based launch and move on to something like a dedicated spacecraft, or keep beating our heads into the wall with large energy expenditures of first defying gravity then pursuing long range space travel.

personally i dont see why we have to do both with one craft, if we build a dedicated spacecraft in space (i.e. using the space station as a docking platform) and ferry supplies to the ship then let it travel longer distances, we dont have to focus so much on energy expenditures.