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Astronauts and PRK
- Thread starter joboy_2.0
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lthackston
Registered User
Confirmed. However, the head of the astronaut selection office said to a group of us a few years ago that he wouldn't be surprised if that changed in the next several years due to continuing advances in the field. But I wouldn't let that keep you from getting surgery. Getting my eyes fixed was one of the best things I've ever done. It's so nice to see.
It sucks, but its true...
I have no idea how fesable or possible my dreams are, but I hope that scientific and exploratory manned space flight moves to the private sector. And think it will HAVE to before the government (and the military) come back to it at strength.
I think they suspended selection for the next class but I think there will still be astronauts for a while, there is this on the horizon........
For the aspiring astro-nerds, keep in mind that you're probably going to have to do at least 15 years in the Navy before getting accepted into NASA's programs. In the meantime, the only ride into space is going to be in something with Soyuz stenciled on its side.
Brett
Brett
By the way...great thread rescue Brett and Flash...
I guess the bigger question that we are all tip-toeing around is...Is manned spaceflight the really that important? Should we, and why should we pursue continued manned spaceflight with beyond orbital capability? I would concede orbital requirements if for no other reason than to maintain capabilities we already have (GPS, communication etc...)but...
I guess the bigger question that we are all tip-toeing around is...Is manned spaceflight the really that important? Should we, and why should we pursue continued manned spaceflight with beyond orbital capability? I would concede orbital requirements if for no other reason than to maintain capabilities we already have (GPS, communication etc...)but...
By the way...great thread rescue Brett and Flash...
I guess the bigger question that we are all tip-toeing around is...Is manned spaceflight the really that important? Should we, and why should we pursue continued manned spaceflight with beyond orbital capability? I would concede orbital requirements if for no other reason than to maintain capabilities we already have (GPS, communication etc...)but...
It's a valid topic for debate. Sometimes people get caught up in the romanticism of the space race. I guess I'm ambivalent - On one hand, I think it makes sense for us to return to the moon and build some kind of semi-permanent outpost for scientific and resource extraction purposes. On the other, should putting a man on Mars really be that high on our list of national priorities? What tangible things do we get in return for such a huge investment? In a perfect world, it would be nice, but this country doesn't exactly have a lot of discretionary income these days. And doing things "on the cheap" hasn't worked out too well for us lately (NASA or DOD).
Brett
I was out at the IEEE Aerospace Conference this week, and heard an interesting presentation from NASA on what they call the "Constellation Program", which is essentially the future of manned spaceflight. To say it was an "optimistic outlook" is probably being charitable. It was a neat set of viewgraphs, but there is a huge gulf between pretty Powerpoint and rockets the size of Saturn 5s hauling 100 tons to LEO. And by "huge gulf", I mean "billions and billions of dollars." Given current budgetary priorities, I find it really hard to make a convincing argument for manned missions; robotic missions can do everything with much less risk and cost. (Sidenote: It's particularly interesting to see the radiation dose vs time results for any manned mission to Mars; let's just say they're not pretty.)
Here's a link to the NASA site: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html
BTW, as far as boondoggles go, in this line of work it is tough to beat the Aerospace Conference; a week in Big Sky, MT in March doesn't suck - especially if you're a skier!
And this worries you why? My point being that even if you were astronaught bound, it would be years away. Away enought to the point of why worry about it now, things change. When I first rolled into NROTC back in 88, it was 20/20 for pilots, nothing less. A few years later, it was 20/30 then 20/40 (at least thats my understanding). Now one can opt for PRK, perhaps LASIK is going to be approved if the threads on here are true. Things change so why worry.
MasterBates
Well-Known Member
Joboy,
If I was you, OCS would worry me more than NASA at this point..
Since you are known to the OCS staff and all...
Mmmm...
I would actually be interested to see the long-term cost-effectiveness dynamics of that sort of thing.
The robots struggle A LOT, and the data they tend to send back is scientifically imperfect and imprecise. Reality is one guy with a rock hammer could do just about all the surfacial research we've ever done on Mars in a matter of hours, possibly ending the debates about flowing water, ancient Martian topography and atmosphere, the apparant lack of geologically modern tectonics, and even bacterial life.
These things matter to me on a personal, scientific, and exploratory level. I cannot argue that my romanticism deserves the kind of pie slice of the budget that would be required to put a man on Mars.
The robots make me cry. For the most part, they are too limited in their size and weight to make the kind of scientific leaps necessary to justify more spending, and nobody is willing to sink more than X dollars into any one project because of the high chance of failure. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother since it so often seems such a Catch-22 to send those things up.
For better or for worse, there's actually almost no contest among the people who do this for a living; robotic science missions are inifinitely preferable to manned missions by just about any metric usable. The only metric where manned spaceflight comes out ahead is in the intangible of "national prestige" - after all, that's what every manned mission since Mercury (or more precisely, since Yuri Gagarin and Vostok...) has been about.
Robotic missions obviously have handicaps, but they have the supreme advantage of not putting human life at stake. Consider the string of failures we had trying to penetrate the Martian IADS - between 1999 and 2003, 5 of the 6 missions were unsuccessful. (I'm being tongue in cheek about the IADS, but their interplanetary defenses seemed to be working quite well for a while...). Imagine the impact on the nation of a loss of life during a mission to Mars; instead of egg on Lockheed Martin's face for using furlongs per fortnight instead of meters per second, we'd have a national tragedy on the order of Columbia + Challenger combined. Better to send the robots into the teeth of the defenses....
Robots are not as cool, and certainly don't appeal to national prestige like manned flight, but the staggering costs associated with man-rated spaceflight are just that - staggering. If money were free, then manned flight would be a no brainer. But money is not free, and certainly not when we're facing a mult-generational war. NASA gets good bipartisan support when it comes to their funding, but I'm afraid when the Constellation bills start coming due in earnest that the program won't stand a snowball's chance. Robotic missions to the planets, including a Mars sample return, would stand a good chance of being funded as "sloppy seconds".
Until getting the price of a kg to LEO goes *way* down, manned lunar or interplanetary missions just won't justify the cost. Bummer, since I've always wanted to be an astronaut. But then again, considering the psycho be-atches the program seems to have attracted, maybe it's better to be content in my spy-dom....
USAdefender
GO STATE!!!
Here's one major factor about a manned Mars mission......THEY WON'T BE COMING HOME!!!! If we send men to Mars, they'll be there for the rest of their lives (however short that maybe). The shear amount of cosmic radiation could fry them before they even get to Mars.
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