Yay! We can all go back to hating Felix again!

[quade 3]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57541674-71/felix-baumgartner-mars-is-a-waste-of-your-tax-dollars/

Felix . . . WTF?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[jonstark 8]

Why should we care what ANY celebrity says? Celebrity does not necessitate or dictate credibility. I might even agree but why should the press make hay with what Felix says? Who cares?

[ShcShc11 0]

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57541674-71/felix-baumgartner-mars-is-a-waste-of-your-tax-dollars/

Felix . . . WTF?

LOL

[quade 3]

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Why should we care what ANY celebrity says? Celebrity does not necessitate or dictate credibility. I might even agree but why should the press make hay with what Felix says? Who cares?

It's a left over from our days as primitives. When Og came back from his incredible adventures killing the wooly mammoth, we listened to him because he survived and by extension obviously knew something about fighting wooly mammoths we didn't. This made Og a celebrity and it was wise for the purposes of survival to listen to what he had to say.

Our brains just haven't gotten past that, so anybody of any celebrity status has our attention because of the primal urge to listen to whatever wisdom they might have. Unfortunately, these days, they usually don't have any and, in fact, might not even fully understand the thing they did that made them famous.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[VTmotoMike08 0]

Again? What did he do to make you hate him before?

[BIGUN 1,051]

I concur with Felix. We have a rapidly expanding populace and less resources each year. His trip was funded privately not with tax dollars. Use that tax money to fund undersea research.

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[jonstark 8]

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Again? What did he do to make you hate him before?

Dayblazing grandstander

[airtwardo 6]

Dayblazing grandstander

Great name for a garage band!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[JohnMitchell 14]

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Why should we care what ANY celebrity says? Celebrity does not necessitate or dictate credibility. I might even agree but why should the press make hay with what Felix says? Who cares?

Maybe he thinks it's a waste of tax money, but MAYBE NOT REDBULL MONEY! I bet he could be the first man to plant the RedBull flag on Mars.
>>>>>

I agree with you. Who cares what he thinks? And to someone who owes all his celebrity to the efforts of scientists and technicians, he sure has a cavalier attitude to scientific research. Almost all of our great technologies that we enjoy today started as pure research, with no particular application in mind. Behold the power of the curious mind.

Felix, you should be ashamed to sound so dull in public.

[Shotgun 1]

No thanks. It's no fun being a hater.

[davelepka 4]

No pun intended, but Felix has just 'jumped' the shark.

BASE jumping, stunts, and the Red Bull thing were cool, and all in his 'wheel house'. Commenting on space exploration, and the related tax expendature, have nothing to do with the above.

I give him credit for making the big jump, but truth be told, he's just the guy who 'fits the costume' (Brady Bunch fans will get that one). Was it a technical achievement to send a man up to 120k in a balloon and have him skydive back to earth? Sure as shit was, but Felix didn't have jack shit to do with any of that. He did what he was told, and stuck with the program long enough to see it become a reality.

Again, much love for the act itself, but it's not like he designed or built the capsule, the suit, the rig, or really much of anything having to do with the jump. Let's hear what those guys have to say about the Mars exploration program as they certainly have a place from which to speak, and some wothwhile insight to lend on the program.

[VTmotoMike08 0]

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Again? What did he do to make you hate him before?

Dayblazing grandstander

Fair enough.

[riddler 0]

Personally, this makes me respect him even more. Because I agree with him. I used to work in Astronautics, but I think our money is better spent on environmental measures. He just demonstrated to me that his intelligence supersedes his vanity (and all human vanity). Kudos to Baumgartner.

Trapped on the surface of a sphere. XKCD

[JohnMitchell 14]

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Personally, this makes me respect him even more. Because I agree with him. I used to work in Astronautics, but I think our money is better spent on environmental measures. He just demonstrated to me that his intelligence supersedes his vanity (and all human vanity). Kudos to Baumgartner.

No dime for human curiosity? Oh, come on. It's such a small part of the budget and science, even pure science, can eventually reap huge rewards.

[skydiver30960 0]

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Personally, this makes me respect him even more. Because I agree with him. I used to work in Astronautics, but I think our money is better spent on environmental measures. He just demonstrated to me that his intelligence supersedes his vanity (and all human vanity). Kudos to Baumgartner.

No dime for human curiosity? Oh, come on. It's such a small part of the budget and science, even pure science, can eventually reap huge rewards.

I agree with JM on this one. I also look at it the same way a sprint runner will improve his sprint times by running longer distances: it's sort of like cross training for the good of mankind. The expanding knowledge base provided by exploring space will help us down here.

Finally, what NASA has accomplished in the "bang for the buck" category with their last few rover missions is INCREDIBLE. The Spirit and Opportunity were each slated for 90 day missions. The Spirit shut down (finally) after 2,695 days, and Opportunity is still going after 3200+ days! I think a huge part of why we undervalue these missions are is how little we (as average joes) understand about the subject matter.

Elvisio "keep 'em roving" Rodriguez

[ShcShc11 0]

And he should revise the notion of "economic waste".

Just because a $ not spent on NASA does not mean a $ was saved. Trying to save that $ could actually mean more $ wasted elsewhere.

e.g:
A passionate scientist wanting to go to University might be denied due to lack of demand on this department.

Instead he goes to law school to become a lawyer.

This would be considered to be a larger waste of taxpayer's money.


Cheers!
Shc

[Zenister 0]

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No pun intended, but Felix has just 'jumped' the shark.

BASE jumping, stunts, and the Red Bull thing were cool, and all in his 'wheel house'. Commenting on space exploration, and the related tax expendature, have nothing to do with the above.

I give him credit for making the big jump, but truth be told, he's just the guy who 'fits the costume' (Brady Bunch fans will get that one). Was it a technical achievement to send a man up to 120k in a balloon and have him skydive back to earth? Sure as shit was, but Felix didn't have jack shit to do with any of that. He did what he was told, and stuck with the program long enough to see it become a reality.

Again, much love for the act itself, but it's not like he designed or built the capsule, the suit, the rig, or really much of anything having to do with the jump. Let's hear what those guys have to say about the Mars exploration program as they certainly have a place from which to speak, and some wothwhile insight to lend on the program.

This. It amazes me how short sighted people are about the benefits of space exploration.

____________________________________
Those who fail to learn from the past are simply Doomed.

[jcd11235 0]

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Quote

Personally, this makes me respect him even more. Because I agree with him. I used to work in Astronautics, but I think our money is better spent on environmental measures. He just demonstrated to me that his intelligence supersedes his vanity (and all human vanity). Kudos to Baumgartner.

No dime for human curiosity? Oh, come on. It's such a small part of the budget and science, even pure science, can eventually reap huge rewards.

Agreed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoW-gxakIU8

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[Coreece 190]

Quote

No thanks. It's no fun being a hater.

This is true, this is true...but when I'm trying not to be an asshole, I find that I don't have very much to say...

Your secrets are the true reflection of who you really are...

[billvon 2,391]

>Sure as shit was, but Felix didn't have jack shit to do with any of that.

Well, in the same way that Kittenger didn't have jack shit to do with his team's achievement, or Armstrong with the first Apollo landing.

[lawrocket 3]

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I think a huge part of why we undervalue these missions are is how little we (as average joes) understand about the subject matter.

Spirit and Opportunity are marvelous creations. But let’s keep it real. They can supply high quality images. They can perform fantastic tasks of chemical analysis. They can dig. They can crawl. And all the while the controllers and scientists on the ground can tell people what they found. Big bang. Big buck.

The average Joes understand little of this. What is the significance? What did it find? Look at Luna 3 – it beamed back the first images of the far side of the moon. Not remembered. How about the Surveyor 3? Check out what it was able to do. Surveyor 3 performed some great studies but something was lacking with it, as it was with other unmanned probes past and present and will lack in the future.

What are people interested in? What can people understand? Do they want to hear about what Surveyor did? No. But they’ll crowd a room to hear Alan Bean talk about what it was like to have taken samples from Surveyor 3 – on the moon. What makes “Earthrise” such a powerful photo? There had been other photographs taken of the earth – and even other photographs of earthrise taken from unmanned probes. But “Earthrise” was powerful because we have Anders who can talk about what it was like taking that picture. “We came all this way to explore the moon and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.” – Bill Anders. The Apollo 8 astronauts were Time’s Men of the Year for 1968. Their reading from the Book of Genesis – on Christmas Eve – provided a human element to the exploration.

Spirit and Opportunity are missing one thing: there’s nobody there to put into words how it feels to be on Mars. Spirit cannot tell us of “magnificent desolation.” Opportunity cannot come back and tell us all of the experience on Mars. Opportunity cannot radio back a description of the environment.

We can study what Spirit and Opportunity tell us. We cannot listen in awe to a raconteur.

24 people went to the moon. 12 people set foot upon the moon. Aldrin, Bean, Mitchell, Scott, Young, Duke, Cernan and Schmitt – 8 people – are all that are on this earth at this point who can tell us what it is to be elsewhere. It’s been 40 years now since anyone has been.

We can get bang for our buck with unmanned probes. The weight saving of no need for life support is immense, not to mention the lack of risk to human life. But even Spirit and Opportunity take weeks to do the work that an astronaut could do in mere hours. And the Mars voyager would be able to describe the place vividly whilst there and once back again.

We are missing the human element. There is a lack of grandeur. We can’t easily identify with that unmanned probe. But when Armstrong died, the nation mourned because he represented all of us. We understood why he was there. We could live vicariously through that.

But not with a probe.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[davelepka 4]

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the same way that Kittenger didn't have jack shit to do with his team's achievement, or Armstrong with the first Apollo landing.

I don't know the details of either of those programs, but Armstrong held a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and was an accomplished Navy pilot and military test pilot before becoming an astronaut. Kittenger was also an accomplished military pilot and had worked on various experimental programs before getting the nod to be 'the jumper'.

Did they have anything more to do with their respective programs, other than 'fitting into the suit'? I don't know, but they both had the qualifications to do so if they did.

Felix, on the other hand, was an accomplished skydiver and BASE jumper, which made him a natural for the skydiving part of the jump. As for the planning and technical aspects, and commenting on the vailidity of space travel, I maintian that he's a little out of his wheelhouse on that one.

I'm not discounting is accomplishment. Even with a support crew doing almost everything for him, for planning everything and building everything, he's the guy who had to suit up and take the ride into the thin air. He's also the guy who had to slide that seat forward and hang his feet out of the capsule, over a 128,000 edge. That's huge, and in those matters, he's the world's authority, but in terms of the space program, it's purpose and benefit to mankind, and it's budget, not so much.