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Scotty Gets Beamed into the Ocean

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 8:36 am by Jami

AZM Ally Greg sends word that James Doohan’s ashes never made it out to space. Along with 208 other people, Scotty’s ashes were aboard the privately funded Falcon 1 rocket headed for space when two minutes into the flight, a problem in stage separation forced SpaceX, the company that funded the project, to ground the rocket in the ocean. Despite Falcon 1 being their third failed launch, SpaceX has plans for a fourth launch in the fourth quarter of this year, a fifth and sixth flight, and a larger rocket called Falcon 9 scheduled for launch in 2010 which will deliver cargo to and from the International Space Station.

Apparently, there’s no such thing as test flights. Once you build the rocket, it’s all or nothing. You cross your fingers, launch the sucker, and hope it makes it out of the atmosphere. Sounds a lot like the early days of NASA. I think the future of the space program will depend on private industry. NASA’s funding counts for one tenth of one percent of the federal budget and every center fights for their little piece of the pie. It’s going to take private industry to really kick the space race back into to high gear because, quite frankly, the federal government is not interested in space. Oh, Bush talks a good game about putting people back on the moon and Mars, but where’s the money? Private industry will have to take up the reigns.

Good money is on China or India taking the lead in the space race in the near future. They’ve got the money to throw at their space program and are both genuinely interested in getting a presence up in space. I think it’s about time some other countries started looking to outer space. We could all certainly benefit from more exploration in general. We’ll have to see how China and India will influence our space program should they get their own explorers on the moon.

And that’s my soapbox ranting about the space program for today.

[Via New York Times]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 8:36 am and is filed under News, Sci Fi, Tele, The Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

4 Responses to “Scotty Gets Beamed into the Ocean”

  1. AvatarDrezz
    Posted: Aug 5th, 2008 at 8:55 am
    1

    Is the race to space actually necessary when there’s no money to give to people who may actually need it?

    Face it - technology is a luxury taken for granted. You have people on the other side of the earth who don’t even wear clothes or have the basic essentials like food and water. Fuck the space race. Take care of your fellow man first. Help a brutha out.

  2. AvatarJami
    Posted: Aug 5th, 2008 at 9:19 am
    2
    Author Comment

    That’s a very solid argument that’s hard to dispute. It’s so terribly true that there are people around the world who have been devastated by disease, poverty, and war that going to space seems like it should be the least of our concerns.

    I don’t have a good answer. But I think to ignore space completely is short sighted.

  3. AvatarHamstadini
    Posted: Aug 5th, 2008 at 11:56 am
    3

    @ Drezz,

    As much as “taking care of your fellow man first” would be a good thing, the facts are that by the time we clothe every man woman and child an asteroid might hit Earth, or the polar caps might melt, or some other disaster might happen. To ensure survival of the human race, we must expand beyond Earth and make it to other planets regardless of present social problems. Once space programs find extraterrestrial resources, then we can talk about the likelihood of helping fellow man.

    In regards to the posting:

    I’m learning in Technical Editing class that there is a lot of miscommunication within a space program. Engineers know what the problems are, but business people head the program and usually don’t understand the importance of what the engineers are saying. Remember the Mars Lander and the “meters/feet” fiasco? By the time a miscommunication goes through, the project is doomed to failure. And when dealing with a space program, a miscommunication can cost the lives of crew and millions of dollars in equipment.

    So yeah, Tech Editors are needed to clean up the Engineers’ memos. It’s a high paying but serious job.

  4. AvatarKevin Bahrt
    Posted: Aug 5th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
    4

    If we only focused on the problems we have we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have. You think the whole starvation thing is new? We wouldn’t have internet or any other form of electronic if all we focused on was solving every problem there is. Sometimes our fellow man has to take care of himself. The whole point of working in a group is so that part of us can focus on advancement and part of us can focus on taking care of each other. If most of us move out to space there won’t be so many issues inhibiting people form taking care of themselves like war and shit. And hopefully once we’ve gotten our tech far enough along the line we’ll do like star trek and put everyone to work and make sure we’ve got that whole Utopian thing going.

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