 | | | Subject: Wow! / Cool. / Hmmm, that's interesting
Posted Jul 19, 2011 by Baron Grim
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101
  | | Of course there will be, just not shuttle flights. For the next few years astronauts will get there via Soyuz flights (ticket prices have recently soared). Then in a few years private space companies will take over ferrying humans and supplies to the ISS. For example the Space X company is currently developing and testing their Dragon spacecraft.
Meanwhile NASA is developing the Orion capsule for deep space missions. The reports of NASA's death have been greatly exaggerated.
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| | | Subject: Wow! / Cool. / Hmmm, that's interesting
Posted Jul 19, 2011 by Baron Grim
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103
| | The most disturbing news NASAwise I've heard lately is from the House Budget committees that have submitted budget proposals cutting another 9% or more from the NASA budget and specifically CANCELLING the James Webb Space Telescope. This is devastating. The JWST is the only Great Observatory telescope in the works. With it dies the entire program. It is designed to see things we've never seen before. It will be able to view things over 13 billion light years away (and back in time). That is nearly back to the origin of the universe itself (give or take a few million years.) Also, it will be able to directly image extra-solar planets. Imagine being able to actually SEE planets orbiting other stars. So far we've only detected them through gravitational wobbles of their host stars or through techniques like interferometry. Their excuse for killing the project is that it is highly over-budget and behind schedule but at this point most of those costs and delays are "sunk". Imagine building a house and all that's left to do is furnish it, but instead you tear the whole thing down to save the future cost of a living room and dining room set. (I recommend writing your representatives in D.C. Unfortunately I've got John Cornyn and Ron Paul representing me. I've written enough to both of them in the past to know that they don't give a  about the concerns of folks like me.)
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