Strange flying-saucer-shaped moons embedded in Saturn’s rings have baffled scientists studying images transmitted by the ESA’s Cassini Spacecraft. Research suggests that the oddly shaped moons, Pan and Atlas, are born largely from clumps of icy particles in the rings themselves, a discovery that could shed light on how Earth and other planets formerd from the disk of matter that once surrounded our newborn sun.

Observations by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft revealed the moons Atlas and Pan, each roughly 12 miles (20 kilometers) from pole to pole, have massive ridges bulging from their equators some 3.7 to 6.5 miles (6 to 10.5 kilometers) high, giving them the classic Earthly UFO appearance.

At first glance, one could assume that fast rates of spin might have stretched Atlas and Pan out into such unusual shapes, just as tossing a disk of pizza dough flattens it out. But astronomers discovered that each takes about 14 hours to complete a rotation — not nearly fast enough to cause the flattened, disk-like shape.

Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and her colleagues suspected these peculiar moons could be formed mostly from Saturn’s rings, rather than just from fragments produced in collisions of larger moons. The location of the ridges lined up precisely with the rings of icy particles in which they were embedded.

After analyzing the shapes and densities of the moons from data captured by Cassini, Porco’s team found that Pan and Atlas appear to be mostly light, porous, icy bodies, just like the particles making up the rings. Computer simulations suggest one-half to two-thirds of these bizarre moons are made of ring material, piled up on massive, dense fragments of bigger moons that disintegrated billions of years ago after catastrophic collisions with one another.

Astrophysicist Sebastien Charnoz at University of Paris Diderot, the lead author of a related study suggests that the Saturnian ice-clump moons elongated and bulged out into the flying-saucer shapes in the manner of accretion disks, which “are found everywhere in the universe —around black holes, around stars, around Jupiter.”

Charnoz added that understanding how the icy particles piled up to make these shapes could shed light on how matter in the protoplanetary disks of our Solar System that formed around our newborn sun could have clumped together to make planets. …

Source: The Daily Galaxy.

A Nasa spacecraft has detected oxygen around one of Saturn’s icy moons, Dione.

The discovery supports a theory that suggests all of the moons near Saturn and Jupiter might have oxygen around them.

Researchers say that their finding increases the likelihood of finding the ingredients for life on one of the moons orbiting gas giants.

The study has been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

According to co-author Andrew Coates of University College London, Dione has no liquid water and so does not have the conditions to support life. But it is possible that other moons of Jupiter and Saturn do.

“Some of the other moons have liquid oceans and so it is worth looking more closely at them for signs of life,” Prof Coates said.

The discovery was made using the Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Dione nearly two years ago. Instruments on board the unmanned probe detected a thin layer of oxygen around the moon, so thin that scientists prefer to call it an “exosphere” rather than an atmosphere.

But the discovery is important because it suggests there is a process at work around the solar system’s gas giants, Saturn and Jupiter, in which oxygen is released from their icy satellites.

It seems that highly charged particles from the planets’ powerful radiation belts split the water in the ice into hydrogen and oxygen.

Dione’s sister moon, Enceladus is thought to harbour a liquid ocean below its icy surface. The same is thought to be true of Europa, Callisto and Ganymede which orbit Jupiter. …

CONTINUED at BBC News.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

I was late watching this debate, as I had to check the replay. Unfortunately, I wasn’t home and I was unable to take serious notes on it. I was at my boss’ house due to it being the annual national sales meeting for my real job and between the alcohol and festivities, this thing was hard to watch in any serious sort of manner. I regret not being able to give it my full attention but the whiskey and wine were flowing, the girls were distracting to say the least and the copious amounts of food transplanted from several of the world’s most exotic regions somehow took precedence over watching the most recent episode of ‘Three Tyrants and a Wizard’. I do apologize as I have been trying to chronicle every damn one of these things but there are just so many, seven this month alone, and turning down a chance to literally spend the night at a party thrown at the mansion of the Indian version of Caligula is incredibly hard to pass up. Bourbon soaked tits are better to stare at than three dudes arguing over their dicks and the fourth shaking his head because America’s fallen so far that we’re literally having a debate about three dicks.

Now I did go back and read the transcripts from the debate and I did watch Ron Paul’s highlights – the only important parts, as the other three’s highlights would’ve put me to sleep in my hungover stupor. If it wasn’t for my boss’ brother handing me a Bloody Mary when I walked through the office door this morning, I’d probably be curled up in a ball under my desk hiding from the flickering power-draining headache-inducing fluorescent lights over my head. Needless to say, I am not a Bloody Mary fan by any stretch of the word, as it just conjures up the thought of drinking vodka with some ketchup spilled in it, but that fucking cocktail hit the spot today and I’m about 70 percent recovered from guest-starring in the Bollywood version of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.

I know I’m rambling about my drunken escapades and that might disinterest you, as you came to this article to experience my certain style of critique on these things, so for that I’m sorry. I will do my best to give you the rundown of the debate, as I saw it between nude champagne showers and Chilean sea bass dodgeball.

So I’m just going to go down the line and analyze the candidates one-by-one starting with Rick Santorum. He started by talking about illegal immigration, border fences and telling the story about his immigrant family for the umpteenth time. He got into it with Ron Paul on foreign policy and failed miserably as he tried to cover up the fact that he’s a goddamned idiot on the affairs of Central and South America. I’ll write more on this when I get to Ron Paul, who owned Santorum like a twenty dollar prostitute. Santorum goes on to bitch about Fannie and Freddie and in turn blasts Newt and Mitt for playing personal politics and distracting everyone from discussing the real issues. On the subject of space, Santorum said that America is a frontier country and space is the next frontier to conquer. He calls for the private sector to be more involved with NASA but doesn’t fully support government being out of it. On health care he goes on and on about how awesome he is for trying to create health savings accounts. If you were so awesome, you would’ve got it done pal! He then gets into a health care argument with Romney that is neither interesting or worth writing about but what the hell, I’ll give you the nutshell version. Basically it went something like this:

Rick Santorum: “Fuck Romneycare”
Mitt Romney: “But it was only at the state level Ricky Baby!”
Rick Santorum: “I don’t care Mitt! You’re a bitch and you gave Obama the blueprints to evil!”
Mitt Romney: “Ricky Baby, you’re so silly!”
Rick Santorum: “Jesus Bible! No health care for the gays!”

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich spent most of their time arguing about who was a bigger bastard while both looked like big bastards. Mittens talked about “self-deportation” again. If these guys believe in such a thing as an effective way of handling a situation, can we get them to believe in “self-governance”? If they trust those illegal immigrants to leave on their own accord after sneaking in here in an effort just to come back in a way that is much more difficult, they’ve got to believe that we’re all capable of managing every other aspect of our lives? I mean, they are putting blind faith into something so farfetched that they’ve got to be down with just saying “fuck it” and letting us run our own shit, right?

On the immigration subject, Newt says that Romney is the most anti-immigrant candidate out of the four. Romney gets all pissy and pulls his two Latino cards. The first he pulls is Marco Rubio, the Cuban American senator that came to his defense on immigration. The second card Mitt pulled was Mexico, as his father was born there. I was born in a hospital bro, that doesn’t make me a doctor!

Romney and Gingrich argue about immigration for awhile and then they argue about Fannie and Freddie and who is the biggest crook. Newt, once he gets away from the lame feud for a minute, goes on some tangent about making a moon base. Newt later said that Jacksonville was going to get big pimpin’ because the Panama Canal was widening and would bring them more boat traffic. Shortly after that we were treated to a Santorum-Gingrich-Romney three-way which was like stumbling upon a middle-aged homosexual version of Cinemax at three in the morning. It was a bitch and rant fuck fest that no one in their right mind needed to see, unless of course you’re into middle-aged gay men. If you are, I mean absolutely no disrespect. Do ya thang homegirl!

Fuck all these queens, let’s get to Ron Paul, the only adult in the room. On immigration, he says that if we had a working healthy economy we wouldn’t be so worried about the immigration issue as we’d be looking for workers to fill jobs. He adds that the way we are handling our borders is actually harming our economy. He points out that we don’t have the right amount of resources on the border and that we should pay more attention to our border instead of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

On the Latin America issue, Ron Paul says, “Free trade is the answer.” He throws in the fact that we’d be a lot better off if we practiced free trade with Cuba. He adds that he doesn’t like the idea that America thinks that they can go down to Central and South America and try to dictate which kind of leaders they need down there, as it is none of our business. He says that the best way to influence other nations isn’t by telling them what to do, it is by practicing friendship and free trade. Paul then references Santorum who said that we have to stand up for these nations. Paul explains that standing up for nations often times comes with us imposing ourselves on the people of these countries while picking their dictators, undermining their government and sending them a lot of money. He warns that this sort of tactic always backfires and the people we are “supporting” end up hating us. Ron Paul calls Rick Santorum’s ideas on foreign policy the “bully way”. Paul adds that he knows a better to way to work with people other than using force. Santorum shakes his head, mumbles some stupid crap and then changes his tampon while wiping his bitch tears. Checkmate Paul!

Ron Paul is asked if Mitt and Newt should return the money they’ve made off of Fannie and Freddie and he responds to thunderous applause when he says, “That subject doesn’t interest me a lot.” Paul says that Fannie and Freddie should have been auctioned off right after the crash came. He said that if it was sold, the problem would’ve been “cleansed” by now. Ron Paul says that he’s been trying to prevent this stuff which is why we need to end the Federal Reserve.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asks says that Ron Paul, if elected, would be the oldest president ever. He asks Paul if he would make his medical records public to show the people that he is healthy. Blitzer basically wants to paint Ron Paul as a geezer who could croak tomorrow and I find the question to be repugnant, just as I found it distasteful when the same issue was brought up with Ronald Reagan years ago. Paul said that he’ll prove how healthy he is by delivering an open challenge to all the other candidates to face him in a 25 mile bike ride in the heat of Texas. Ron Paul face-palmed the shit out of Wolf Blitzer and the other candidates with that answer. He also took a shot at Wolf himself when he jokingly pointed out that there are laws against age discrimination and that Blitzer should be careful. Wolf, after getting bitchslapped, tries to cover up the stupid question by asking the other candidates if they’d release theirs. What a tool.

On space spending, Ron Paul says that he would only approve funding on stuff that fits under defense. He says that going to the Moon and Mars is fantastic but that it could be done better by the private sector if their hands weren’t tied. Ron Paul then takes a shot at Newt, saying that he has stretched the truth with all his “balanced budget” claims from the days when he was Speaker of the House. Ron Paul is taking solid shots backed by facts and there is nothing that can be done about it when he brings these guys a dose of the truth. Strangely, Newt Gingrich was very polite and gracious to Ron Paul all night and gave him props for his ideas in several areas.

In the end, the debate was lightyears better than the NBC debate a few days prior. CNN does the best job, in my opinion, and I’ve watched every single one of these debates. Kudos to Wolf for rocking the house, even with a few prickish questions. Ron Paul owned the motherfucker, Santorum did decent if you are into his religio-fascist bullshit while Newt and Mitt looked like a few bickering Tinas arguing over the last pack of Lee Press-On Nails at K-Mart.

And that’s all I got because I immediately returned to my whiskey-scented orgy on the south lawn.

Grading Scale:
Grade A+: Ron Paul
Grade C-: Rick Santorum
Grade D+: Newt Gingrich
Grade D: Mitt Romney

*Best debate moment in recent memory:

Beijing (XNA) Dec 30, 2011China will launch orbiters for lunar soft landing, roving and surveying to implement the second stage of lunar exploration in next five years, a white paper said Thursday.

China’s lunar probe projects are based on the idea of “three steps” – orbiting, landing and returning, said the white paper “China’s Space Activities in 2011″ issued by the State Council Information Office.

In the third stage, China will start to sample the moon’s surface matters and get those samples back to Earth, the paper said.

The country’s lunar probe projects have achieved milestone breakthroughs since 2006, with the successful launching of two lunar probes, the Chang’e-1 on Oct. 24, 2007, and Chang’e-2 on Oct. 1, 2010.

The first probe retrieved a great deal of scientific data and a complete map of the moon while the second one created a full higher-resolution map of the moon and a high-definition image of Sinus Iridium.

By the implementation of lunar exploration projects, China will make in-situ analyses, morphological and structural surveys of the lunar surface in landing and roving areas, conduct environmental surveys of the lunar surface and make moon-based astronomical observations.

China will also push forward its exploration of planets, asteroids and the sun of the solar system, according to the white paper.

By using spacecraft, China will study the properties of black holes and physical laws under extreme conditions, explore properties of dark matter particles, and test basic theories of quantum mechanics.

It will also conduct scientific experiments on microgravity and space life science, explore and forecast the space environment and study their effects.

Source: Xinhua News Agency.

*Taken from USA Today. Video at link.

Does Smokey Bear need a space helmet? NASA isn’t headed back to the moon anytime soon, but some day space tourists may be on the way to the Apollo mission lunar landing sites.

And you know the one thing that tourists love to bring home.

Souvenirs.

“Looting, that would be pretty bad,” says archaeologist Beth O’Leary of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Looting is the bane of archaeological sites and O’Leary has spearheaded efforts to declare moon landing sites as historic preserves or national parks, seeking to head off similar depredations before before tourists leave Earth for the moon. “I put landing people on the moon up there with creating fire as a technological achievement.”

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Geekologie.

Seen here proving the moon isn’t nearly as inhospitable as NASA would lead you to believe, an astronaut practices drilling the moon while simultaneously sucking the mana out of a dude in a camo hat. And now billionaire Naveen Jain wants to get up there and mine the man in the moon’s face off. Oh come on, his complexion is already bad enough!

Jain’s company, Moon Express, Inc., has already been awarded $10 million by NASA, and plans to establish a mining operation on the moon’s surface within a couple of years.
And this is economically viable?

CONTINUED..

Ron Paul may be the greatest American since the days of real men and our Founding Fathers. There isn’t much the guy says that a real patriot cannot disagree with. In fact, at the moment, I cannot think of anything. He wants real freedom and strives to expose tyranny on a daily basis. He is the spiritual advisor and leader to those of us who want to end the tyrannical Federal Reserve. He helped contribute to the mass awakening of the people in this country and he is the best candidate we have for president as far as I am concerned. Granted, Gary Johnson and Herman Cain are a very close second.

Via TheSwash.com

As we sit at the precipice of a new era of exploration, I thought it appropriate to revisit the original inspiration and rationale for the first lunar exploration program as so eloquently stated by John F. Kennedy. The original speech by JFK was held in Houston, TX at the Rice Stadium in the fall of 1962.

“Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

-John F. Kennedy, Rice University, Sept. 12, 1962

*Taken from Space.com.

A massive new private rocket envisioned by the commercial spaceflight company SpaceX could do more than just ferry big satellites and spacecraft into orbit. It could even help return astronauts to the moon, the rocket’s builder says.

SpaceX announced plans to build the huge rocket, called the Falcon Heavy, yesterday (April 5). To make the new booster, SpaceX will upgrade its Falcon 9 rockets with twin strap-on boosters and other systems to make them capable of launching larger payloads into space than any other rocket operating today.

But the Falcon Heavy’s increased power could also be put toward traveling beyond low-Earth orbit and out into the solar system, said SpaceX’s founder and CEO Elon Musk during a Tuesday press conference. [Video: How SpaceX's Falcon Heavy Rocket Flies]

“It certainly opens up a wide range of possibilities, such as returning to the moon and conceivably going to Mars,” Musk said.

Traveling that far requires more lift than most rockets flying today, including NASA’s space shuttle. But the Falcon Heavy, which is designed to generate 3.8 million pounds (1,700 metric tons) of thrust, would be able to do the job, Musk said.

“The Falcon 9 Heavy could go much farther than low-Earth orbit,” Musk said. The heavy-lift rocket could fly on its first test flights as soon as 2013, he added. [Photos: SpaceX's First Falcon 9 Rocket Launch]

A private moon rocket?

The Falcon Heavy booster is designed to have more lifting capability than any other rocket in service today, and about half the capability of the most powerful rocket ever built, NASA’s towering Saturn 5 booster, which sent the Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The Falcon Heavy may not be able to carry everything needed for a mission to the moon in a single go, but it could potentially launch various components separately. For example, the astronauts and moon lander could be launched in one trip, with another liftoff following to deliver the vehicle that would ferry the crew back home, Musk said.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has so far made two successful test launches, one of which carried SpaceX’s Dragon capsule to orbit for the first time. Both rockets will initially fly unmanned, but have been created with flying people in mind. [World's Tallest Rockets]

“As far as human standards are concerned, they are designed to meet all of the published human standards,” Musk said.

SpaceX’s commercial plans

The Hawthorne, Calif.-based company hopes the Falcon rockets will be used to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station, and possibly beyond, after the space agency’s space shuttles retire this year. SpaceX already has a $1.6 million contract to haul cargo to the space station aboard the Falcon 9.

In addition to NASA missions, the Falcon Heavy could prove useful for other commercial space ventures. For example, the Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace is designing a commercial space station, and eyeing establishing a private moon base.

Such a destination would require a vehicle to help build it, as well as a rocket to ferry space tourists and other clients to and from the base.

Even farther destinations like Mars are not out of the question with the Falcon Heavy, Musk said, though such a trip would probably require multiple launches. He brought up the possibility of a mission to collect samples of Martian dirt and return them to Earth for studying – an endeavor that has so far proven prohibitively complicated.

“The Falcon Heavy has so much more capability than any other vehicle, I think we can start to realistically contemplate missions like a Mars sample return,” Musk said.

And the company isn’t content to stop at the Falcon Heavy.

SpaceX is also considering building an even more powerful rocket called a “super heavy-lift” vehicle that would have about three times the capability of a Falcon Heavy, or about 50 percent more power than the Saturn 5.

Such a vehicle would likely have no trouble reaching the moon, Mars or beyond.

Musk said SpaceX has a small contract with NASA right now to explore the possibility of building the super heavy-lift rocket.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Growing up an avid fan of both ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek’, as well as science fiction in general, I have always had a pretty raging boner for anything in the realm of space and space exploration. Hell, science in general gets me pretty fucking excited! So it should come as no surprise that I’ve always been a big fan of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

As a kid, NASA was like the real world version of the United Federation of Planets. Granted, there were no planets apart from Earth that were involved with NASA and really, it was just the United States that had the in. Despite that, the times I got to go to the Kennedy Space Center in my home state of Florida were like living in a movie. I never got to go to SpaceCamp but I did feel like little Joaquin Phoenix in the ‘SpaceCamp’ film as I was standing in front of a massive Saturn V rocket. I was a small kid full of wild dreams and a hell of an imagination. I remember leaving the Kennedy Space Center in awe and promising myself that one day I would build my own spacecraft. I was never able to pick a design though; I couldn’t decide between the Millennium Falcon, the Klingon Bird-of-Prey or the Gunstar from ‘The Last Starfighter’. In retrospect, I may have had giant dreams but I was inspired and affected by the wonders of what NASA had accomplished.

The problem is, NASA really hasn’t done shit lately. By lately I mean the last 30 years or so. The only big thing that comes to mind when thinking of NASA over the last few decades is the tragedies that occurred due to serious negligence. The mighty god NASA has fallen and fallen quite far from where it was in its heyday. I’m not claiming that NASA has devolved into a shitty and useless organization but they have gone from the pinnacle of awesomeness in the 1960′s to a subpar and wasteful government funded mess today. It brings a tear to this once aspiring astronaut’s eye.

Where the problem lies is in the fact that NASA operates on so much government funding a.k.a. tax money a.k.a. OUR money that just like with everything the Beltway suits touch, it has turned to poop. This is because NASA is a division of big government. Due to big government’s hand being directly in the post-Cold War space race, competition from the private sector has been stifled and nearly stomped out of the picture. It’s not easy to prosper under the endless regulations big government throws at you, especially when they are trying to keep your market cornered as a government controlled monopoly. Only a handful of companies are finally giving NASA a run for their money; SpaceX and Virgin Galactic are definitely leading the pack. This is a very good thing as far as I am concerned because competition from the private sector should spur a resurgence in NASA. So you’d think, right?

Well, while SpaceX and other companies like Virgin Galactic are pushing the bar well beyond our atmosphere, NASA is slipping further and further into the void. It has become a bastard child of the government and one of the first programs to come under attack when pointing the finger at government waste. Most of the angry claims against NASA are valid. Two major tragedies have happened under their care and since the Apollo missions, not much has come out of the space program that is even all that memorable.

Looking back at the beginning of NASA, they were kicking serious Soviet ass during the Cold War! They were national heroes! NASA was created by President Eisenhower in 1958 and by 1969, after a promise by President Kennedy, they had already landed on the fucking moon! Now that is progress people!

Nowadays we have a shuttle program that is about to shut down, a president cutting funding and a promise to reach Mars in like 30+ years. NASA was once created to topple the Russian space program and now it relies on Russia to take our American asses to the space station. So essentially, even after Eisenhower and Kennedy’s ruthless ass stomping of the Soviets, their killer legacy was just a flash in the pan because today, we’ve obviously lost the race. Sometimes I get the feeling that that assclown Obama is rooting for the other team, just sayin’.

The reality is that when bureaucrats like Obama are calling the shots, bad shit happens. When privatized companies run their own show, good shit happens. See, when a guy like Obama comes in and cuts funding and kills the follow-up mission to the moon, he is acting on an impulse that is from a politician’s point-of-view and not a scientist’s point-of-view. Never mind the fact that he may have scientists in his ear swaying him one way or another. Point is, he isn’t qualified to make these calls, just as he, with no business experience, isn’t qualified to make decisions related to business. Although, being the all-knowing deity he feels he is, he needs no justification for his careless and ignorant actions. He is smart and we are dumb (scientists included).

When Obama cut the Constellation Program and the return trip to the moon in favor of a Mars trip decades away, he really shot himself in the foot and proved that politicians and space don’t mix. Essentially, the Constellation Program would have replaced the shuttle program which is ending this year. Through the Constellation Program, we would have been able to still take ourselves to the space station and further study how to live in space. Eventually this would’ve helped us on our return trip to the moon and in developing a moon base. The moon base would’ve been the next step between the space station and space colonization. In the end, what we really want to do is colonize Mars, if it is possible. In doing so, we as human beings will have crossed a monumental threshold! We would no longer have to be residents of Earth, unless of course we chose to be. We need to experience the trial and error it will take for us to move forward. Now, we’re stuck here waiting for a pointless mission in a few decades that will in no way be as rewarding or useful to us, had we done it the way that was initially intended. You can’t jump from the beginning of the book and expect to know what is going on if you skip the core parts and jump to the last few pages.

Taking into account NASA’s tragedies, one has to wonder if they are indeed capable of getting people to Mars, let alone back to the moon. Even though these tragedies could have been prevented, space travel is extremely risky and astronauts know that one little mishap is all it takes for tragedy to strike. This is why they are trained meticulously. No matter what though, accidents will happen. That is just the nature of things, especially incredibly large and complex things. As long as NASA learns from its mistakes and corrects them on future missions, then moving forward will always be possible. However, with government’s hand in the fray, I become very worrisome. Truthfully, people will die in the process. Lives are always on the line. However, looking at how government handles everything, one has to ponder the question: would things run much smoother and safer in the hands of private enterprise?

People like super-mogul and intergalactic pimp Richard Branson are making quick strides in the business of space exploration. Branson’s Virgin Galactic created and successfully launched the first private spaceship back in 2004, the company was established earlier in that same year! Branson’s company was the first to send a manned vehicle into sub-orbit! Since then, he has been working tirelessly on creating a vehicle that can take you and I into space! What’s next after that? The universe is our bitch! This is what happens when someone with drive, desire, inspiration and motivation is pushing towards their dreams without government involvement.

Las Vegas real estate developer Robert Bigelow created Bigelow Aerospace in 1998, and has already started constructing his own space station. There is already a prototype in space as I write this and he plans to use his work to help colonize places other than Earth. His entire program will cost $500 million dollars; that is exactly the same price as a single space shuttle flight. Now compare that to NASA’s annual budget for 2011, which will be $19 billion dollars! Bigelow’s whole program costs only 2.6 percent that of NASA’s budget for just this year!

SpaceX, another private space company, founded in 2002, became the first private company to ever place an object in orbit and recover it. Because of their huge success, NASA has commissioned them to haul cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Yes, government run NASA has hired a private company to do what they apparently can’t. NASA was established in 1958, SpaceX was established in 2002. Is it starting to click yet? The whole paradigm that only government can send people into space, has been shattered.

NASA’s immediate ROI (return on investment) is often times laughable. When looking just simply at dollars versus dollars, it is hard to see the vast landscape. Truthfully, NASA has contributed a lot to American society and the world as a whole that most people aren’t even aware of. NASA gave us teflon, microwave ovens, miniature computers, cell phones, smart phones, GPS and many other awesome inventions that have completely redefined the way we live. All these things were born out of developing the space shuttle and other projects. Although these innovative items’ existence in the world may not directly affect NASA’s ROI, they have in fact, created a whole new industry and boosted our economy. NASA is good for business.

However, imagine how productive NASA would be if it wasn’t owned by the government and if it was free of regulation. The private sector is about to eclipse the public sector when it comes to space exploration and because of that, NASA will be left by the wayside like every other government entity. Between being forced to keep jobs for thousands upon thousands of unionized employees and developing special projects for the government that detract from their real mission, NASA will lose the corporate space race.

I love NASA but I’d rather the government stay the fuck out of the space business and let the chips fall where they may. Unfortunately, that would most likely be the demise of NASA. Then again, privatization and competition may force their hand. NASA would honestly have a better chance at survival if they did go private. Right now they are on life support and what little ambition they have left is asphyxiated by the tightening grip of the government’s fist. Deep down, NASA knows that it is time to step their game up.

To deal with competition, NASA has still been excelling at their greatest contribution to the world: science. The future of NASA will be shaped by their scientific discoveries and research. Where they seem to be falling behind in space exploration, they are still kicking serious ass in research, study and data collection. NASA has its strengths as well as the tools and people to keep it thriving. It just needs to be allowed to thrive!

The truth is, NASA is one of those optional things that the government decides to forcibly throw our money into. This essentially hurts NASA and limits what it can be, it also limits our wallets. Why can’t government just stay out of the way? Let NASA exist privately and if we the people want it to exist, we will support it. NASA would be forced to run itself much more efficiently and the space race would rocket forward (pun intended) and literally take us “where no man has gone before.” I don’t know about you people but I want my Millennium Falcon! And shit man, I don’t expect the government to be able to build it. Let’s keep it real!