U.S. Ending Search for Earth-Like World?

Originally posted by Skewed
Maybe they found what they are looking for.

Or werent looking for???

reply to post by pazcat


Stupid me didn't even go to the article, apparently Universe Today has already addressed the 'rumor'. Washington Times specifically sited.

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by ShortMemory

 

You understand what light years means right? 2-way communication is simply out of the question.

Our technology is such that we can't definitively detect life on bodies in our own solar system (even in vivo) let alone a thousand light years distant. I don't know how much financial infrastructure it takes to continue a mission once everything is in place, I would be inclined to guess less than 5% of the mission cost so cutting this mission so early IMO is a political boner.

I don't go off on wild fantasy speculations, money shoots down most conspiracy theories all by itself.

I want to make sure I understand you. Are you saying that we never should have had any space exploration because it's too expensive? Or are you saying that money is always used as an excuse to shutdown any unwanted discovery? Or, are you saying something else?

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by pazcat

 

Stupid me didn't even go to the article, apparently Universe Today has already addressed the 'rumor'. Washington Times specifically sited.

Excellent find! Thank you for posting that information!

reply to post by Illustronic

(I was coming to post the same link lol)

I think the key item there is this bit of info about Robert Zubrin's statement:

He supplied no source of his details beyond saying he had “leaked” information. Likely, his article was his way of advertising an upcoming symposium he is part of, a tactic he has used before.

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by pazcat

 

Stupid me didn't even go to the article, apparently Universe Today has already addressed the 'rumor'. Washington Times specifically sited.

We've found our answer. Thanks to everyone for contributing to this thread.

reply to post by 1questioner


Seeing this thread is dead I'll address the question to clarify. My point is that Occam's Razor would suggest money shutting down a mission is more likely than a discovery of some wild speculation that's literally beyond our technology, all we can definitively say is conditions and spectrographic data suggests a life supporting planet is not impossible.
As mentioned here as well by another poster why nobody has gone back to the moon, again money is a more levelheaded and sound reason more than we were kicked out by aliens, told not to return, or some other discovery NASA wants to hide. The return of investment is literally zero to send men to the moon or beyond when robots and spacecraft can do just about everything men can at a fraction of the cost and zero risk to life.

As far as back-engineering alien technology there are at least two very real obstacles, language, and knowledge, for instance, say the Vikings found plans for a 747, there's no way even after the language barrier is breached that they knew anything about the processes, or material technology to ever have made a working prototype, let alone figuring out what any of the math means. Now consider the Vikings wouldn't have to wait 'light years' for any inquiries of what may or may not be language, or communications at all.

Search for life supporting planets is strictly analytical science with zero return of investment in applied science technology. This is the very core of each and every spacecraft probe launched from this planet, the quest for knowledge with no immediate return of investment anticipated or expected other than pure scientific discovery.

Originally posted by juleol
reply to post by ShortMemory

 

The kepler project just started, so makes absolutely no sense to shut it down so soon.

This shows again how anti space exploration obama and his administration is.

It wouldn't have surprised me had it been true.

Originally posted by Illustronic
reply to post by pazcat

 

Stupid me didn't even go to the article, apparently Universe Today has already addressed the 'rumor'. Washington Times specifically sited.

Thanks for the link. Hopefully it's an unfounded rumor as that suggests. But they may cut other things.

I like what Neil Tyson says about NASA's budget in this video:

Neil Degrasse Tyson on Bill Maher


For those of you who can't watch the video, he says:
1. The bank bailout was larger than the entire 50 year running budget of NASA!
2. So it's not that they don't have the money, they choose to waste it elsewhere, which is sad because:
3. The space exploration program is the one thing we spend money on that inspires our imaginations, our hopes and our dreams unlike anything else. (recalling the good old days when we put a man on the moon and it seemed like anything was possible, we should get that feeling back).

reply to posts by Illustronic Arbitrageur


"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded--here and there, now and then--are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as 'bad luck.'"

-- Robert Heinlein

Maybe this was a bit premature...just in...

www.space.com...

I doubt Kepler will be shut down. But NASA unmanned exploration division will indeed get reduced, mark my words. In an era of tight budgets and money-hungry SLS rocket, there wont be much left for unmanned probes.

Washington Times - NASA budget and Kepler

Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, being readied on the pad, will be launched, as will the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter scheduled for 2013, but that will be it. No further missions to anywhere are planned.

After 2013, America’s amazing career of planetary exploration, which ran from the Mariner probes in the 1960s through the great Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Pathfinder, MarsGlobalSurveyor, MarsOdyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, MarsReconnaissanceOrbiter, Galileo and Cassini missions, will simply end.

Furthermore, the plan from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also leaves the space astronomy program adrift and headed for destruction. The now-orbiting Kepler Telescope will be turned off in midmission, stopping it before it can complete its goal of finding other Earths. Even worse, the magnificent Webb Telescope, the agency’s flagship, which promises fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of the laws of the universe, is not sufficiently funded to allow successful completion. This guarantees further costly delays, with the ensuing budgetary overruns leading inevitably to eventual cancellation.

Whichi is essentialy the same as the OP article, however it looks like this might be the source and the op links carried it.

Originally posted by Aestheteka
reply to post by juleol

 

This is the year of expensive space shut downs....
It really looks like we're battening down the hatches for something

Perhaps the crushing US debt?

Reply to post by 1questioner

Ok, here's my opinion---they found what they were looking for...if ya find gold ya don't shout about it, ya wait until everyone's *sleeping* and ya dig dig dig then run run run. By the time the headlines read "Earth's 3rd cousin has been located!!", she will have already been raped.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Just for the record I work in this field and I can tell you with 100% percent certainty that we havent found anything. Not a thing. And the reason most likely is that there is nothing to find. This is why you cant find any real evidence of alien intelligence anywhere, period. I challenge anyone on this statement.

Obama has been tasked by his overlords to destroy America. Since the space program has been a source of national pride as well as technical progress, he needs to crush that and instead make our greatest hope finding our next meal or our next cardboard box to sleep under.

Originally posted by SevenThunders
Obama has been tasked by his overlords to destroy America. Since the space program has been a source of national pride as well as technical progress, he needs to crush that and instead make our greatest hope finding our next meal or our next cardboard box to sleep under.

While not ideal, Obama space policy is better than Bush or congress one. He is a proponent of commercial space.

Originally posted by unsteadystate
Just for the record I work in this field and I can tell you with 100% percent certainty that we havent found anything. Not a thing. And the reason most likely is that there is nothing to find. This is why you cant find any real evidence of alien intelligence anywhere, period. I challenge anyone on this statement.

Kepler was designed to locate earth size planets, which have been discovered and verified. Not sure why they would jsut pull the plug when the mission was succesful, and NASA needs all the good PR it can get.

If its ended because of funding, which is what its looking, its a different story. However I woul prefer to cut government spending, in the from of Foreign aid, and reallocate those funds to NASA.