NASA says warp speed possible

repoman wrote: NASAs funding must be up for a vote. They usually release some utter bullshit statement just before.

THAT right there is where NASA truly has top talent.

I think it's pretty obvious that the ring will be made of pure neutronium.

S.

ThirstyMan wrote: This ring, potentially made of exotic matter

Riiiight, that would be the matter that nobody has ever seen or can describe yet...

Hey, they made the Nuva Ring...and that's pretty exotic...

repoman wrote: NASAs funding must be up for a vote. They usually release some utter bullshit statement just before.

That was my reaction, too.

I suspect that this ring of exotic matter will be composed of unobtainium.

Did you see the headline today?

NASA Leader wrote: In light of the revelation that we foresee space travel at faster-than-light speeds as imminent, today I would like to announce, with great pleasure, that we now not only believe that a 'warp drive' will be possible, but that it will be able to travel at...Ludicrous Speed

Sagrilarus wrote:

repoman wrote: NASAs funding must be up for a vote. They usually release some utter bullshit statement just before.

THAT right there is where NASA truly has top talent.

Unfortunately not true for any department beyond the manned flight wing with a bit of splash-over on the deep space probe crowd. The earth sciences folks have been getting crushed year over year because the bulk of the money goes to the headline-generators. A coworker who spent years at NASA Langley pointed out to me a few years back that "the priority nowadays is to find answers to questions about Mars that we aren't sure we've even answered about Earth yet." There was also a distinct grumble about "that shuttle moneypit..." but that was pretty much expected from a guy whose project was basically killed when every spare nickle NASA had was being diverted to the two long "Return to Flight" programs that followed the two catastrophic failures.

With no more manned flight on the boards (and thus no more highly visible "instant American Hero" spokesmen in the pipeline), a bullshit statement about warpdrive will still go over better with the American public than an appeal for more money to replace (or deploy for the first time in some cases) a new pile of expensive sensor platforms.

They should just devote themselves to Muslim Outreach which I understand is their primary mission now.

Sorry y'all, just checking in to see if this might be where the Friday Freakout was happening. Carry on.

there should be an adjacent article to this one about NASA desperately trying to stay relevant.

Black Barney wrote: ...NASA desperately trying to stay relevant.

I used precisely that phrase in the first cut at my post above but ended up editing it out when I cut the post down by 2/3rds. Guess I should have left it in there as it would have been decent Friday Freakout fodder.

The only reason NASA is struggling for relevance is because the American public, as evidenced by the complete knuckleheads they select from their communities to serve them in the various halls of power, is too fucking stupid to understand that there is value in funding basic research as well as R&D work that may not see commercial return for a couple of generations, if at all. With the possible exception of big pharma/biotech, most commercial entities simply can't sink money into basic "advance our understanding" research and remain solvent. Universities, on the other hand, are driven by grant funding, which, in turns has an impact on where the money goes--this is why AIDS research has been Top of the Pops for 30 years and everything in the world is covered by pink fucking ribbons even though breast cancer is less prevalent than skin or lung cancers.

In the end, it actually *is* up to the government to fund and generally perform that sort of work--but, since many seem to believe that the need to be smarter than the other guy ended with the end of the Cold War, you really have to sell this idea to the people who hold the purse strings. It doesn't take much lookin' to see that THOSE cockgobblers are more interested in having square-jawed 'Merican HeeeRowwws standing next at some photo-op in their district, not some schlub in a lab coat. The suspension of manned flight, with its exorbitant costs and moderate returns, was the most sensible financial thing for NASA to do but it's bad from a PR perspective. America doesn't actually lag the world in maths and sciences--there are scores of PhDs out there either trapped in the endless cycle of post-doc wage slavery or working outside their fields altogether--what we now lag the fucking world in is a basic appreciation for and value on basic research and the cost of undertaking it. It's the "Walmart Shopper" worldview--why spend scads of money on doing the work; we can just wait for China (or Germany, Switzerland, Israel, etc.) to do all that Expensive Hard Stuff; I'm sure we can just license whatever it is later--after all, we ARE the U.S. so they couldn't possibly say no to us....

That sufficient to start a proper Friday Freakout?

Not quite. Why don't we get Black Barney to tell us about the Canadian Space Program?