VASIMR: Obama's NASA.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myYs4DCCZts[/youtube]

An utter damnation of the Obama administration. Devistating!

ruveyn

Yeah, I'm not watching 60 minutes of that, but I only had to watch 30 seconds to be able to tell that a one-sided debate is definitely, as the man says, "super-fair"

Zubrin is pushing for his nuclear salt water rocket.

He never mentioned it once. He pointed out the the Obama administration is do-nothing and operates on the non-principle of mendacity.

ruveyn

He invited the advocates of VASIMR, they didn't show. Their loss. He could have said nothing, but as it is he was honest about it.

I did watch this and got a laugh out of the LSD analogy (tell us how you *really* feel....).

As for the 'fairness' and showing up, sometimes the other side simply knows that it'll look worse for them if they do and worse for their opponent if they don't. I'd love to hear a refutation to these claims or at least some information on the case for VASIMR to fact check Zubrin's claims rather have it be a "Oh, they're not there and he's railing on like a neocon so clearly he must be lying" kind of thing.

This does offer at least one big pro for commercialization of space rather than having it be a strictly governmental thing. Politicians have agendas, they want to cater favors to certain industry, and space exploration will be hostage to that so long as its purely in the hands of government.

Yeah, the not showing up to debates tactic seems to be the latest ploy to discredit opponents, but Dr. Zubrin had it published and all that stuff and didn't change the title of the scheduled talk (which if he did, then people wouldn't react like Obres reacted, but the ploy of silence and treating one's opponent like they aren't worth refuting plays on such sentiments.)


Here's another series of the same basic thing: the current function of the space program, doing nothing and looking busy about it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkN4rSDT3gs[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrR46C-NjlA[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC_CPy4xdH0[/youtube]

VASIMR is a private project run by a private corporation. NASA is going to let them test a thruster on the ISS. The near term use is for thrusters, not Mars engines. To do more would require a revolutionary space power source, which is not funded.

Find a significant budget for VASIMR at NASA. Good luck. it's not there. This is just more Zubrin Mars Now advocacy. He can't deal with the fact that we won't be going in his lifetime. Then conservatives who hate Obama twist this into a major Obama space initiative (it's not), as they did with Bolden's talk of outreach to Muslim nations. This is just low brow online political blah blah.

"Then conservatives who hate Obama..."

Why the heck do you think we don't like him? I don't like him for what he's done to the space program and the money he's wasted, and how he was demanding that Israel return to is pre-1967 borders which he only changed his meaning to mean nothing after he saw it was unpopular. He sucks and he needs to be voted out. Replace him with a hamster and let it power a generator, you'll get more use out of the president then.

What you think is of no interest to me. I'm just correcting your latest error of fact.

Right, sure. Whatever.

Got news for you; the Bush space program was ill conceived amd was going nowhere from the lack of budget. Obama simply put a program with more realistic expectations.

You want to see humans on Mars? Then do what should have been done 20 years ago, do drastic cut to US army budget and give the money to NASA, then we'll talk.

See, your problem is that your hatred keeps you from doing basic fact checking. What sounds good to you must be true. One day you might wake up and realize that the people you know don't believe the things you say because they've caught your emotionally driven distortions once too often.

That only hurts you. The internet will continue to be unfazed.

If you had actually watched the first video, you'd know Zubrin's point is that developing the technology for VASIMR is waste of money to begin with. The VASIMR design has already been around for 30 years and prototypes have already been tested in the lab. Needless to say that other electric propulsion systems, which have already been used on some NASA space probes, are actually more efficient than VASIMR.

Also, regardless of the short term goals of the VASIMR design is, the Obama administration made the false claim that the technology is needed before a manned mission to Mars can be attempted when in fact it has no capability to enable such a mission (on top of that, the traditional chemical propulsion would work fine).

Last edited by Jono on 19 Jan 2012, 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Has nothing to do with the OPs point. This is not an Obama initiative. It's a private company run by a former astronaut who has been doing this work for decades and who may in future fly a small prototype to the ISS. There are advantages and disadvantages to different thrusters and Zubrin is entitled to his opinion. But private thrusters arent his concern, his concern is Mars now! (as always). And the agreement to test it was signed under Bush, not Obama.

The OP is trying to insinuate that VASIMR is a feature or focus of the current exploration program. That is not the case. It may be a far future feature but that's notional stuff, not something that is budgeted as an exploration option. No current NASA reference plans incorporate VASIMR for exploration. That's a fact.

Zubrin is reacting to a comment by the NASA administrator, not the actual budget or policy. But budget is policy. Anything else is just talking and dreaming of what might happen one day.