Giant Freakin Robot

The search for extraterrestrial life has been and always will be one of mankind’s greatest journeys. Into the depths of space we’ve sent many probes that have returned nothing but our own bleeps and bloops that have been lost in the ever-expanding cosmos. But maybe we’ve been looking too far away.

Mars is our closest celestial neighbor, after our moon of course, and we may not find Marvin the Martian puttering about on its surface, but Washington State Universtiy’s Dirk Schulze-Makuch thinks that with a small effort we may uncover early forms of life just beneath the red planet’s harsh surface. In an interview with Space.com, Schulze-Makuch outlined his idea to send six probes to the martian surface that once landed will dig four to eight inches into the soil and begin a series of tests that will reveal whether or not microscopic life exists.

These sorts of missions have largely been overlooked since the first hunt for life on Mars, 1975’s Viking mission, returned didley squat. However, Schulze-Makuch’s proposed mission will only cost an estimated $300 million, which sounds a lot to you and me, but in NASA’s world this is peanuts.

Sad news this morning as further budget cuts are heading NASA’s way from a Congress that somehow thinks they know what’s best for the US space program. Before you government advocates get all up in arms (just kidding, I know there’s no such thing as a government advocate), recognize that we do understand that the US budget is limited and that in this day and age the cuts have to come from somewhere so Republicans don’t lose their shit. However, taking money from what this nerd considers one of the most important government programs doesn’t strike me as the best idea.

In a long and mildly confusing article at Ars Technica, details of the House and Senate opinions on where NASA’s cuts should be made are explained in detail, but I’ll try to simplify it a little. Currently there are four companies producing vehicles for the Commercial Crew program, whose goal is to provide cost effective access to low Earth orbit as well as the ISS. Each of the companies, Boeing, Space X, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin, are each being subsidized by NASA’s dwindling budget.

To solve this glut of spending, the Senate has suggested a “leader-follower paradigm” in which NASA selects a winner to receive a larger subsidy, and a secondary company to receive a smaller cash injection as back up, leaving the other companies in the space dust. This sounds like a great idea as a simple way to cut costs. Sure competition breeds innovation, but this kind of competition is much too costly and is hindering progress. Cutting two large costs will help NASA make the most of their budget, and allow them to focus on one or two producers instead of four. The frontrunner for the leader position has reportedly been Boeing, but that is not yet official.

Yesterday the Shuttle Discovery flew its final mission, a piggyback ride on a 747 from Florida to Washington DC, where it will take its place as a permanent part of the Smithsonian’s Dulles Airport collection. In doing so, it has displaced the Shuttle Enterprise, formerly housed there and now on the move to somewhere else.

Unlike the Discovery, Enterprise has never actually been in outer space. It was the first shuttle ever constructed but it was only ever used to test the vehicle’s atmospheric flight ability. I guess that makes it a little less valuable than the Discovery, so it makes sense that the Smithsonian would replace it with a ship that’s actually been out in the void.

But the Enterprise is still the first ever space shuttle and that means it’s wanted, somewhere. That somewhere is in Manhattan where it’s scheduled to be displayed on the deck of the Intrepid, an aircraft carrier turned int a floating museum.

NASA has retired its shuttle fleet which means American no longer has a way to put a man in outer space. So what do you do with the shuttles? Put them in a museum and remember the good old days when the United States was still interested in space exploration.

The shuttle Discovery flew its final mission this morning when it was piggybacked on top of a 747 and flown from Kennedy Space Center in Brevard, Florida to its new home in Washington DC. Here’s how it looked on its final flight…