It's official: NASA is a jobs program.

Re:It's official: NASA is a jobs program. by biohacker42 on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @09:24AM (#770364)

1. Which government program isn't?

2. Is NASA really your #1 concern?

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Re:It's official: NASA is a jobs program. by marze on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @10:23AM (#770484)

To those who feel that human exploration of the solar system is something they'd like to see near term, if a govt. agency tasked with the job is doing an incompetent job of it while spending billions to develop capability that already exists in the private sector (read: Atlas V), I could understand why they might focus on this particular "govt. jobs program".

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Re:It's official: NASA is a jobs program. by jfoutz on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @10:57AM (#770571)

I could be misunderstanding, but it looks to me like an Atlas V HLV has about 1/5 the lift capacity of a Saturn V. I know materials are better now, but I'm not convinced they are 500% better. Furthermore, the air, water, food and crew is a fixed mass. I doubt an atlas could take a person to the moon and back even if the structure and fuel are massless.

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Re:It's official: NASA is a jobs program. by jfoutz on Tuesday August 18, 2009 @01:39PM (#770974)

Oh, i am dumb. yeah, I guess an atlas would be fine. It would take a lot more trips to get the vehicle built but the reuse of existing tech is probably far cheaper that building something new.

not enough coffee this morning i guess.

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