It was such a joy to watch $260 Million slam into the earth!!

[Tom_Foolery]

I just sat and thought about what I could do with that much money. It makes me sick to think that we throw away money on crap that doesn't mean anything. I used to support the space program; but after the Challenger and Columbia disasters, I think NASA is a waste of money.

[enki23]

1. not big on science, then, i take it

.

[madmax]

2. You ain't seen nothing yet.

Have they shelved the Missile Shield?

[aquart]

3. A lot of hearts were broken today. Important knowledge was lost.

Years of work came to nothing.

But all you see is the COST IN DOLLARS???

Abandoning space because some efforts have errors mean we never learn from the errors. Which would be stupid.

But that's your plan?

When are you moving back to the cave?

[Dookus]

4. nope

science is not a waste of money.

[DjTj]

5. Most of that $260 Million went into the pockets of working people...

...engineers, technicians, scientists, secretaries, janitors, managers, students, and many others.

Genesis wasn't a box filled with $260 million, it was a project built by many individuals - people who chose not to use their skills and intelligence to maximize profit for themselves but to pursue research for the good of humankind.

The things that NASA is trying to do are not easy. As John F. Kennedy once said:

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too."

[TreasonousBastard]

6. NASA may have wasted a lot of money over the years...

but science and the pursuit of knowledge is never a waste.

260 BILLION in Iraq, however...

[DRoseDARs]

7. Well, this mission was doomed from its conception...

...I mean honestly, wtf were they thinking? Catching the probe as it falls from the sky with airplanes? I can't imagine the FAA NOT having conniption fits over that brilliant bit of planning.

[shawcomm]

8. Yeah, I wonder about that too...

The sample plates were so fragile that they couldn't bear impact of landing, even chuted, so how did they survive launch?

Too, if they designed the chutes so that it would fall slow enough for a helicopter to catch it, why couldn't they have had it splash down in the ocean, possible designed so that it enters the water with a lesser impact, sort of like a diver tries to do?

[lapfog_1]

20. Launch dynamics and impact dynamics

even on a 'chute, would be radically different. Launch has steady
build up of g forces over time, plus a lot of vibration. Landing
has short sudden g force (very high g's).

Sort of like the difference between a 0 to 60 acceleration of
your car... compared to a bumper thumper accident of that same
car.

[ThoughtCriminal]

9. Would have worked

except the parachute did not deploy. Early reports seem to indicate it was tumbling rather than spinning as it should when it re-entered.

[The Traveler]

11. Been done before

especially by the Soviets back in the sixties. Not a radical recovery technique, actually ... but takes some damn fine piloting.

[PVnRT]

10. Science is a waste of money?

Nice attitude. $260 million dollars is barely a drop in the federal budget.

[lapfog_1]

12. Bullshit.

NASA had paid for itself by a factor of 10. If nothing ever went
wrong with research, it wouldn't be "research". I could detail
the research central to everyday life in page after page, but
suffice it to say, it's not orange Tang. I will give you one
example, ever notice the air deflectors on the top of over the road
trucks? Ever wonder how much diesel fuel that saves every year.
( The savings every year in dollars is about 25 percent of the
NASA budget)... Where did the idea for air deflectors come from?
Where did the aerodynamic research happen? Oh yeah, NASA.

Then there is Global Warming and the research NASA conducts on
this very important issue (which Bush would like to kill).
I can't put a price on this. But the estimate for the annual
cost to the planet for Global Warming is 100s of Billions already.
Who is sticking the proverbial thermometer into the planetary
orifice? NASA.

Again, it's too bad that this experiment failed, you can bet
that some very bright people (a few dozens) who had put this
together are right now reviewing everything. But experiments
fail occasionally. They have to be allowed to fail, otherwise
only things that are known to work will be tried, and that's
not really research.

(And yes, I'm a former NASA scientist, and yes I did research
for the agency... you may even be using right this instant some
of my research results). And some of my research "failed" (but
we still learned things, even from failures).

[The Traveler]

18. Hey man! Well said.

I was trying to write that very argument ... but my daughter intervened and I now see you did it better anyway.

Ad astra per aspera, dude.

:toast:

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. Pfagh, I say. Pfagh to you

Scientific exploration - or any exploration for more knowledge - is never a waste of money.

It's so sad that all you see is a "waste" of 260 million dollars. I see 260 million that paid a lot of salaries, provided a lot of food for families, and helped further our knowledge. And our knowledge was especially furthered in how to stop this from happening again. It might save us even more money in the long run to have this one "fail" today.

Remember, all the money that NASA pours into research, adn into probes, and into the space shuttle - all that stuff - that money doesn't just disappear into the aether. That money goes into people's pockets - people who could be working elsewhere, making shitloads more money, but they are dedicated to knowledge and so work for NASA. And also the people who work in the factories who make the stuff, and the peo
It's not like NASA just took 260 million in paper currency and burned it up, never to be seen again.

Sheesh. Get a grip.

[Swede]

15. I remember arguing the same thing with the Apollo mission to the moon.

There was not one cent spent on the moon. But now we have computers in every house,the internet,cell phones all spin offs in one way or another by research at NASA.

[Rabrrrrrr]

16. Darn rootin' tootin' right

A hell of a lot of things we take for granted were invented because of a need to have them for space adventures.

[Zomby Woof]

14. far, far better...

Than 200 BILLION slammed into Iraq, with thousands dead and breeding terrorists by the day...

[DieboldMustDie]

17. $260 million is less than we're spending per day in Iraq.

:shrug:

[Swede]

19. They don't have a working radiation detector for cargo at the port ot LA.

Estimate cost for the detector is $400 million. Less then they spend in two days in Iraq.

[JSJ]

21. nasa's been a bust since the military took over operations n/t