Hubble is cool and people support it, but it didn't excite people the way that Apollo did.

I'll turn that right around at you, though -- ISS is cool, but it didn't excite people the way HUBBLE did.

Shuttle is cool, but it didn't excite people the way HUBBLE did.

I'm still trying to figure out what the ISS did vs. Mir or Skylab (other than cost many times as much). Ask 1,000 folks about the shuttle, and they will talk about Challenger or Columbia. They won't be able to comment with specifics on the science aspect. There have been 119 missions of the shuttle. The best ones? Fixing... HUBBLE. Can anyone name any science that any one of those other missions did? I surely cannot....

Oh there is no doubt that Hubble is the coolest thing we've done since Apollo - and even with the focus screw-up and repair costs associated with it, it's been the most return on any dollar ever spent in space.

To get the money you need to do impressive space things you have to have a program that the common man can get behind... it takes bodies in space to do that.

Warren

Hubble is cool, but for my money the most impressive space achievement since Apollo was Viking. Nobody knew almost anything about the environments the landers had to fly through and land in, yet they worked beautifully. To me, the coolest program for the dollar is a tight race between MER (expensive for Mars, but a very small fraction of Hubble), Pathfinder (pretty cheap) and Stardust (very cheap.) The Mars Polar Lander and Mars Climate Orbiter, combined, were only about 1/4 the cost of MER, and they almost worked. Although "Better, Faster, Cheaper" has been largely discredited because we can't stand the occasional failures, I'm still a fan of it because it is so effective at teaching the industry how to build spacecraft efficiently. When you have Lockheed Martin, out at Waterton Canyon, building spacecraft after spacecraft, and the same engineer gets to be involved in the whole development cycle of 4 or more different spacecraft, and build in improvements each time, there's no better way to advance the state of the art.

Not as flashy, but very important is the Mars Reconaissance Orbiter. Check out these pictures ( http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/061006_mro_opportunity_victoria.html ) of the Opportunity lander from orbit. MRO, in about a year, has returned over 3 terabytes of data from Mars to Earth, even though it's thousands of times farther from the ground stations Earth than Hubble is. Hubble took more than 10 years to downlink that much data. MRO has fuel to last about 30 years, and will be the cornerstone of Mars exploration for the forseeable future, scouting landing sites, and relaying data in addition to its own science duties. Right now it's truly the state of the art.

John, no one is dissagreeing with you. BUT it does take a manned space aspect to get the bucks. If people can't put a human face on it, they won't pony up. And, YES, it's been wasteful and, since Apollo, largely ineffective. IF any pertinent scientific progress has been made, then NASA has NOT really publicized it. I agree with everyone else, what they've stated is hardly worth the money. It took China forty years or so to orbit, why aren't they suckered in to the ISS? We lost three astronauts in the Apollo program (Grissom, Chaffee, and White), but so many more in the Shuttle missions, which after the first few flights was pretty much over as far as discovery. We all remember one of the original SEVEN who said, and I paraphrse, "How would you feel sitting on top of the lowest bidder in a government contract?"

I work with the guy who designed the optics for the HiRISE instrument. He'll be coming to Oktoberfest. He's also flown about 2 dozen Nike/Black Brant shots for an XRay telescope he worked on.

Warren

JW, even from the cornfields of Iowa, you still get us riled up. 😉 Gonna miss you at the cleaning party tomorrow...

Adrian, you are right on the money about MRO. The link you sent had this very famous photo http://tinyurl.com/2ueg5r

How'd the cleaning party go? I'm very sorry I missed it! it will be good to see so many of you in two weeks at OF.

Got my rocket ready for BALLS today. This is one of the few rockets I've ever built that I'm much more worried more about the "up" part than the "down" part. Hoping for 5 miles AGL.

John, since I showed up two hours late, I'm hardly one to speak. But everything went just fine at the cleaning party. Ed cooked up a great lunch, and things (not so much from me) got cleaned up very nicely. And, yeah, you were talked about, and all good stuff. We all look forward to seeing you in two weeks as well.

That is one fine bird! I hope someone will be taking pictures at BALLS, so we can see another one of your accomplishments. 😉

There are 5 NCR guys that I am aware of going to BALLS -- Eric, Kyle, Dale, Larry B., and myself. Everyone is flying at least an L, all the way up to a beefy N. It should be quite cool! I'll try to post Sunday night, depending on when I get back.

I'm looking forward to OF as much or more --

JW

I have to say, for the money, it is hard to beat the achievements of MER. What they have achieved is nothing short of amazing, especially considering the original program goals.

Here is another interesting "log on the fire"

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070924/D8RS0OOO1.html

A friend of mine works for Ball areospace. I was lucky enough to go visit Ball aerospace and a few satellites. I went there about November of last year and last Wensday they flew a satellite on a Delta 2 rocket. this satellite was in the last stages of building when i saw it. All the programs that he is working on will boost our knowledge of earth and other planets. So to me man space flight is a waste as is the space station. We need more satellites looking for answers then joy rides to the unique place outside of this world.