Not true. They've been very busy exploring every single planet in the Solar System, including New Horizons to Pluto and the Kyper Belt and also including landing a probe on Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
Imagine having pictures sent back on approach and from landing on an ice moon of Saturn, 8x the distance from our own sun, call it a billion miles.
The salty sulphide laden seawater geysers they bravely passed through from orbit, collecting samples, on Enceladus alone has changed science.
Just getting into an orbit around Mercury with Messenger was a remarkable accomplishment. That's not easy. Took 7 years with precision timing every step of the way.
The sheer volume of data they have collected from all of this has expanded our knowledge of all science and our origins with many surprises along the way.
Just because the media does not hype up and go ga ga over acquiring exceptional and ground breaking knowledge certainly does not mean they have a poor mindset.
https://i.imgur.com/KRSN7at.mp4
Of course, NASA doesn't have the problem of having to deal with NIMBY's or BANANA's in space. At least not yet.
Hey, sounds like a great idea for a sci-fi film, "NIMBY's In Space!"
I wonder what J.J. Abrams could do with it?
Well they were their own NIMBYs -- they were going to crash Cassini on Enceladus as it's last mission flyby but once they found salt water geysers, and lots of them, they did not want to chance there could be life there and contaminate the whole place with microbes from Earth (Earth cooties) so they burned it up in the atmosphere of Saturn ... and it sent back 30 years worth of data to interpret as it did until the signal stopped transmitting... imagine that! They didn't expect that either.
Enceladus is very close to Saturns rings and that is one of the reasons they reflect so brightly.. those geysers shoot into space and the saltwater/ice falls on them replenishing their shiny surface with a fresh shine. Nobody knew that, not even in a wild crazy guess.
If it wasn't for steam locomotives and trying to figure out how to make them better we would never even have come up with the Laws of Thermodynamics when we did.
Scientific discoveries really can bend your mind into facing truths and the simple beauty of the cosmos.
MiningmanScientific discoveries really can bend your mind into facing truths and the simple beauty of the cosmos.
After decades of science fiction stories and novels, true science reveals the that same chemistry and physics that exist on Earth - exist everywhere else in the Universe.
Unless and until Man creates a transportation method that can take human beings at faster than light speed - we will forever be restricted to personally exploring planets in our own Solar system.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
MiningmanNot true.
I call crock.
Where is the large-scale manufacturing and vehicle-assembly capability in the higher range of LEO, outside the trace atmosphere but inside the radiation belts? the nickel-iron asteroid mining? the single-crystal manufacturing by the kiloton? Where are the powersats? Where are the space habs? Where is colonization at L5 or other Lagrange points in various systems? Where are the lunar colonies?
A few shoestring-financed slingshot-orbited probes, wonderful though their results be, only amount to a fractional percent of 'what could have been'.
(Although I've said before, and I'll say again, it is a VERY good thing we got no functional Almaz ... and that was more on the way to being built than any of the things I mentioned.)
You been reading Popular Mechanics from the 50's again?
Also I suggest cutting down on your Star Trek viewing.
Yeah, "Star Trek's" been all downhill after "Voyager" anyway.
BaltACD In the 50 years since the Moon landing, the USA has morphed from a 'CAN DO' mind set to a 'NO F'N WAY' mind set. Pathetic!
Presumably you wrote your message on a PC that was developed in the United States and uses software put together by Microsoft, Apple, etc. Just one small example of the USA no can do mind set.
Here is another example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZRKm6PG918
For someone that holds every license issued by the FAA, this is poetry in motion. Don't know how it came together in the U.S.? Maybe the Russians put it together at night when no one was looking.
Rio Grande Valley, CFI,CFII
Wow, a land development scheme in south Florida turns to questionable tactics. Who would have ever seen this coming?
PJS1Just one small example of the USA no can do mind set.
I think he was referring more to orbital and space travel than to incompetence in tech...
Here is another example ... For someone that holds every license issued by the FAA, this is poetry in motion. Maybe the Russians put it together at night when no one was looking.
The better comparison with what Balt was saying is where development of the 2707 line would have been at a similar number of years of evolution. Let alone VentureStar or the wide variety of technologies for semiballistic flight. (Or the things Avro Canada might have developed -- but that's another story, best told by real and not honorary Canadians). How long have you had your Mach rating? Your Mach 25 patch? Those might have been almost commonplace by now.
Of course the debt to the Russians does need to be recognized -- both as a competitor in space and as an excuse to spend trillions in the aggregate on rocket science and hardware. Who in America would have privately financed a push to space without government support of the whole slew of enabling technologies ... through several generations of process, many of which became essentially worthless when superseded? We have a long and checkered history of can-don't until pushed or threatened beyond complacency, including so many of our corporations that were worldwide household names years ago but now gone (or swallowed or replaced by foreigners with more can-do where their mouth is).
I'm always willing with open mindset to see the flip side but sometimes there is a third dimension to things , in fact most times.
As Kathy Shadlie wrote " My hostility to NASA and all its works and pomps is longstanding and unshakable. The space program was a shameful waste of extorted tax dollars, all to fly to a rock in the sky that doesn't even have any cool animals.
Defenders retort that the space program has spun off a host of indispensable inventions, but such wonders, if truly crucial, would have been developed anyhow — perhaps even faster, and more cheaply, had the government left trillions in stolen cash in the hands of private enterprise.
In fact, a fictional "space program" has arguably inspired as many innovations as the real one, and as its sets — dressed with papier mâché boulders and (probably) Christmas lights behind cardboard — can attest, was far more cost-efficient."
Without war, no Manhattan Project (I'm disregarding the controversy) and no nuclear energy perhaps and a lot of side developments.
"In the 50 years since the Moon landing, the USA has morphed from a 'CAN DO' mind set to a 'NO F'N WAY' mind set. Pathetic!"
Ignoring the context for a moment, it is a broad brush indictment.
PJS1"In the 50 years since the Moon landing, the USA has morphed from a 'CAN DO' mind set to a 'NO F'N WAY' mind set. Pathetic!" Ignoring the context for a moment, it is a broad brush indictment.
Go big or go home.
Remember at the time Kennedy made his by the end of the decade speech - the USA was trailing the USSR in space accomplishments.
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PJS1 BaltACD In the 50 years since the Moon landing, the USA has morphed from a 'CAN DO' mind set to a 'NO F'N WAY' mind set. Pathetic! Presumably you wrote your message on a PC that was developed in the United States and uses software put together by Microsoft, Apple, etc. Just one small example of the USA no can do mind set. Here is another example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZRKm6PG918 For someone that holds every license issued by the FAA, this is poetry in motion. Don't know how it came together in the U.S.? Maybe the Russians put it together at night when no one was looking.
"Poetry in motion" all right! "If it looks good, it'll fly good!"
But it'll never hold a place in my heart like these birds do...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXXZYpGVaoQ
You have no idea how that tugs at the heart of this old mainly jet jockey. anther one is an over fly of 3 B-36s
I know blue streak, wasn't that something? Wasn't that freaking something?
The aerial heroes, the aces, of World War One are remembered, but you know what, in my opinion ALL those early aviators were heroes.
Not too long ago I watched a video of a retired Air Force colonel, a fighter jock, who said "Once you've flown fighters nothing else compares! But now I'm retired, and buying an F-15 is out of the question."
You know what he did? He built a replica Nieuport 28 WW1 fighter!
"It's not an F-15, but it fills the bill!"
Flintlock76"Poetry in motion" all right! "If it looks good, it'll fly good!" But it'll never hold a place in my heart like these birds do... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXXZYpGVaoQ
WW I planes are great. 21st Century video and how their shutters work when taking video of propeller driven aircraft suck - depending upon propeller speeds the the video makes the prop look like it is moving in one direction and then an instant later it is moving in the opposite direction.
Balt: You can also get that moving back vision from the old westerns filmed at 16 frames a second and played at 24. The wagon wheels look like they are going backwards. We had a terrible time trying to convince a boy hood friend of ours that it was not going backward.
blue streak 1Balt: You can also get that moving back vision from the old westerns filmed at 16 frames a second and played at 24. The wagon wheels look like they are going backwards. We had a terrible time trying to convince a boy hood friend of ours that it was not going backward.
What is even more disturbing are those video cameras that make propellers look like they are bent at a right angle under certain circumstances.
blue streak 1 Balt: You can also get that moving back vision from the old westerns filmed at 16 frames a second and played at 24. The wagon wheels look like they are going backwards. We had a terrible time trying to convince a boy hood friend of ours that it was not going backward.
That wagon wheels rolling backward phenomenon was noticed by Hollywood decades ago. They figured out a fix but it just wasn't cost-effective, so they let it go figuring audiences would ignore it anyway. They were right.
And I've noticed that weird propeller spin phenomenon of various videos as well. Since I know what's causing it I just ignore it.
and Kung Fu movies there lips keep moving after they stop talking and David Carridine is not Asian
Flintlock76 blue streak 1 Balt: You can also get that moving back vision from the old westerns filmed at 16 frames a second and played at 24. The wagon wheels look like they are going backwards. We had a terrible time trying to convince a boy hood friend of ours that it was not going backward. That wagon wheels rolling backward phenomenon was noticed by Hollywood decades ago. They figured out a fix but it just wasn't cost-effective, so they let it go figuring audiences would ignore it anyway. They were right. And I've noticed that weird propeller spin phenomenon of various videos as well. Since I know what's causing it I just ignore it.
I get the backward rotation on the videos my Garmin VIRB Elite makes on my racing.
The eyes and their pathway's to the brain and how the brain handles rotary motion can created the backward 'vision' even without film or video being involved.
I'm glad you gents enjoyed that WW1 fly-past video I posted, but in the interest of equal time...
If that video was a good example of a German two-seater crew's nightmare, how about a British two-seater crew's nightmare? Maybe this one's scarier? Especially considering who it is?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iJpzsbsD2M
Flintlock: another great video. Do all our posters realize how hard that take off in formation is ? Just one burp of any aircraft's engine and things would get dicey quickly. Those engines are probably much less reliable than todays recips.
Blue streak, the late Cole Palen, the creator of the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome said the old engines were actually pretty good as long as you took care of them.
Engine issues during the First World War were usually due to poor fuel, (the unleaded gas of those days caused carbon build-up on the spark plugs, cars had the same problem too) poor lubricants, and iffy maintanance when parts didn't come through.
Same with the machine guns. There was nothing wrong with the designs, but problems typically were due to poor ammunition or poor quality control during manufacture.
And I concur, the pilots flying those triplanes know their stuff! Great formation takeoff, expertly done!
Flintlock76That wagon wheels rolling backward phenomenon was noticed by Hollywood decades ago. They figured out a fix but it just wasn't cost-effective, so they let it go figuring audiences would ignore it anyway. They were right.
It occurs to me that I don't ever remember seeing steam engine driver spokes moving backwards on film.
The illusion is caused by the spacing and rotational speed of the spokes relative to the timing of film exposure from cel to cel. Steam locomotive spokes are spaced differently and probably turn at a different rotational speed.
Something not entirely unexpected. Virgin Atlantic declared Bankruptcy. Bloomberg ( paywalled ) reports that Brightline has terminated its relationship with Virgin. Virgin denies.
Brightline says it will go back to being called Brightline.
CSSHEGEWISCHThe illusion is caused by the spacing and rotational speed of the spokes relative to the timing of film exposure from cel to cel. Steam locomotive spokes are spaced differently and probably turn at a different rotational speed.
Watch a propeller aircraft engine after it has been started and try to visually figure out if the prop is moving clockwise or counter clockwise.
Human vision has a latency in the frame rate that the brain can handle.
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