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#976 |
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
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Ion Thrusters! Engage!
![]() Ion Thruster Sets World Record While the Dawn spacecraft is visiting the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, NASA Glenn has been developing the next generation of ion thrusters for future missions. NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT) Project has developed a 7-kilowatt ion thruster that can provide the capabilities needed in the future. An ion thruster produces small levels of thrust relative to chemical thrusters, but does so at higher specific impulse (or higher exhaust velocities), which means that an ion thruster has a fuel efficiency of 10-12 times greater than a chemical thruster. The higher the rocket's specific impulse (fuel efficiency), the farther the spacecraft can go with a given amount of fuel. Given that an ion thruster produces small levels of thrust relative to chemical thrusters, it needs to operate in excess of 10,000 hours to slowly accelerate the spacecraft to speeds necessary to reach the asteroid belt or beyond. The NEXT ion thruster has been operated for over 43,000 hours, which for rocket scientists means that the thruster has processed over 770 kilograms of xenon propellant and can provide 30 million-newton-seconds of total impulse to the spacecraft. This demonstrated performance permits future science spacecraft to travel to varied destinations, such as extended tours of multi-asteroids, comets, and outer planets and their moons.
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#977 | |
(Sir/Yes Sir/Aye Aye Sir)
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Diving
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Don't get me wrong, I get it, I support it, and I'm the first to say the kids in Africa have been starving for, well, EVER (!!!); so the money we put into NASA and science in general (some more GloryDayz-life-impacting than cool pics of the horse-head nebula), need to stay funded because GloryDayz like cool stuff and cool pics... But yeah, astrophysics is an expensive luxury because I'll never go to Mars...but that's OK, I'm worth ever $1B of it.... Now, if they find a earth-ending meteor some other science doode figures out how to put Bruce Willis on it to blow it the **** up before it hits earth, they're useful to me beyond benefiting science overall by entertaining me.
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#978 | |
Grand champ
Join Date: Sep 2007
Casino cash: $782369
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#979 | ||
Has a particular set of skills
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: On the water
Casino cash: $1788962
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Mind you own damn business |
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#980 |
Supporter
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Who knows?
Casino cash: $1625884
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#981 | ||||
Ain't no relax!
Join Date: Sep 2005
Casino cash: $1008919
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Quote:
What do you think NASA really costs? A study has shown that many people incorrectly assume NASA’s budget is 20% of the total US budget. In reality, funding for NASA is only represents 0.6%. The entire history of NASA does not add up to the amount spent on the military in a single year. Quote:
![]() Interactive version with more info: http://public.tableausoftware.com/vi...g/USPriorities Quote:
And NASA creates jobs too.. Quote:
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#982 | |
Sexiest Athlete
Join Date: Apr 2001
Casino cash: $221925
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#983 | |
(Sir/Yes Sir/Aye Aye Sir)
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Diving
Casino cash: $2615380
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One has to wonder where we'd be today had we not seemingly gone chincy on space exploration after beating the Russians to the moon and then the space shuttle. Yeah, there have been a few things here and there, but NOTHING like the effort we made in the 60s...
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#984 |
Fifty eight sixty two...
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Felton, DE
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#985 | |
(Sir/Yes Sir/Aye Aye Sir)
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Diving
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So don't think I don't know or get science, I'm just OK with them enhancing some pics to keep the funding flowing into the community. Money well spent IMO.
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#986 | |
Sexiest Athlete
Join Date: Apr 2001
Casino cash: $221925
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Quote:
Last edited by Fat Elvis; 08-20-2013 at 10:19 PM.. |
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Posts: 12,663
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#987 |
Veteran
Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: DE
Casino cash: $9765019
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Instead of "wind" mills why not "magnet" mills? Too costly?
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#988 | |
Supporter
Join Date: Jul 2011
Casino cash: $3321956
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I mean.. you do realize NASA does more than just send robots to mars right? |
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#989 | |
(Sir/Yes Sir/Aye Aye Sir)
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Diving
Casino cash: $2615380
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http://www.thespacereview.com/article/898/1 Reletive to feeding the hungry the article says "Does anyone seriously believe that increasing spending on social programs from $1.581 trillion to $1.597 trillion would make any appreciable difference", and I think that's spot-on. And you're right, we need NASA, we need the jobs it creates and we sure as hell need the many benefits it brings beyond those pretty pictures. But for every one of us who have an appreciation for particle physics, quantum theory, string theory, and the advancement of young minds, there's somebody who see those billions potentially being part of their next handout. And those handouts are their plan for funding their life. So scientists getting funded will always be a sales jobs, on that you can count my friend. No matter if it's NASA, DARPA, or the sweet little lab in the basement of your favorite institution for higher education - science, unfortunately, needs salesmen. I hate reality sometimes Sir..
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#990 | |
Sexiest Athlete
Join Date: Apr 2001
Casino cash: $221925
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Quote:
You have to look at return on investment--and that changes over time; during the 60s you had an incredible return on investment with the money spent on NASA even though in today's dollars valuation we actually spent a lot more money on the program. There were a lot of new discoveries and branches of sciences that spun off of the NASA program. Today, however, we have gone beyond a point of diminishing returns. The majority of money that currently goes into NASA would be better spent funding other science programs, as I mentioned, such as the National Science Foundation and National Institute for Health. I'm all for slicing the defense budget; cut it in half. The cost of maintaining our military is strangling us. We didn't win the Cold War on the battlefield; we won it because we bankrupted the Soviets. Cutting the defense budget in half would eliminate a lot of deficit spending, that money could go towards paying down the servicing of our debt. We could then plow that money back into education, infrastructure and social programs (whose costs should start declining again in about 2035 when the boomers start dieing off). In the meantime, 2/3rds of the current NASA budget would go towards branches of science that have a higher RoI and as deficit spending decreases and is eliminated, the percentage of the budget spent on scientific research increases dramatically. Just because you perceive that a particular program is a relatively small percentage of a budget doesn't mean it is a small program. 0.6% of the water in a bathtub is a completely different scale than 0.6% of the water in the Pacific ocean. |
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