Reenergizing the human space effort. (1 Viewer)

[Holadem]

We need an S.R. Hadden to pull out the mother of all hoaxes. That will unite humanity toward the goal of space exploration faster than diarrhea out of a cat
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Holadem - I stole that expression from Chris Manyard...

 

[Graham Perks]

The HST has been fantastic. It's not every mission that has results plastered on calendars in malls!

As for dealing with Earthbound issues before sailing into the sky, it's a good job Columbus didn't listen to such nonsense. Europe was hardly a bed of peaceful happy campers where nobody was ill and nobody starved. He went off, explored, and started the colonization of the Americas. What a silly man! Who knows how many people he could have fed and cured by staying at home! Surely the world would be a better place with the Americas being colonized!

As for spoiling the other planets, well if you really agree with that, pack your bags, get back to your ancestral home, and leave the Americas to its indiginous people.

Gimme a break. You can't tell me that all the exploration mankind has done has all been a mistake. We should just sit at home in our shack in our village and not explore, because afterall people in our village are starving.

Well hey! Maybe over that next hill, or next planet, or next star system, there's food and energy and cures to be found!

Columbus was looking for a new trade route to India. Instead he found the West Indies and the Americas. We think we're going to the Moon, or to Mars, but who know what we will actually find when we get there? Or what technology we will develop to get us there? It's a long step from a raft to the ships that Columbus needed. And I'm sure the technology and infrastructure involved in designing and building those ships has helped civilization. Good job he didn't wait until he could teleport instantly, eh?

In the long run, has that exploration paid off? Yes, of course! So many inventions and cures have been developed in the Americas. How many more might our Lunar descendants find, with their unique environment and unique government? (They're sure to want independence eventually!)

I feel sorry for those who can only sit in their village shack and who cannot envision the bigger universe around them. It's there waiting for us.

 

[Holadem]

As for the "we don't even know what we are looking for" argument, isn't going into the unknown the point of exploration?

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Holadem

 

[Kevin Coleman]

Very well said Graham.
Kevin C.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Except...

So many inventions and cures have been developed in the Americas. How many more might our Lunar descendants find, with their unique environment and unique government? (They're sure to want independence eventually!)

Perhaps lots.
I say again, I think the current effort is fairly good in line with other priorities here on Earth.

 

[Jack Briggs]

What if we, like the Europeans, find something good that belongs to someone else?

Well, of course, Phil, if that happened we will have stumbled upon the most important discovery in the history of our species!

 

[RobertR]

if that happened we will have stumbled upon the most important discovery in the history of our species!

You got that right, Jack!
But if we assume that areas we're able to go to for a very long time have no intelligent life, does anyone object to going there? Is there anything "wrong" with the idea of "conquering" Mars, given that it's unlikely to have ANY life, let alone intelligent life?

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

What if we, like the Europeans, find something good that belongs to someone else?

I would hope that we learned from our past mistakes in this area and know how to treat it properly.

 

[Max Leung]

(Dammit, I.E. crashed as I was typing my reply)

if that happened we will have stumbled upon the most important discovery in the history of our species!

And then we can kill them with our laser blasters and photon torpedoes! Technology developed as a joint effort between NASA and the military, of course.
Bah, I was in the middle of writing a reasonably elitist and precocious rebuttal to the "oh but the space program gave us all this cool shit" myth. The same space program that gave us the $100 zero-gravity pen while the outer-space russkies gnaw on their 5 cent dead-tree pencils!
The argument that the space program can help us solve other un-related problems on earth is poor...why don't you just attack those problems directly then? The fast food industry is years ahead of NASA when it comes to food preparation, storage, and artifical flavouring...and they didn't need to develop a Saturn V rocket! If I was head scientist at NASA, I'd be consulting with the fast food scientists about efficient ways of flavouring, storing, and preparing food for long-term space missions. And I'd make doubly sure that every crew member has a stack of pencils to take with them, and ban pens. Exploding pens in zero-g is NOT an option!
The space program is all about exploring outer space. If you have to resort to the "offshoot technologies argument" to justify it, then you need to buttress your argument more! Use the argument about how it benefits science. Then point out how science benefits mankind.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Max: The "spinoffs" line of reasoning is itself one of the buttresses of the main argument for the exploration of space. NASA was forced into that difficult situation shortly after the anti-space media backlash began at around the time of Apollo 12 in November, 1969. If NASA could talk openly about exploring the great beyond it would. There's a muzzle on the agency.

 

[Max Leung]

"According to Trojan's head scientist, the fluid used in the shuttle's payload hatch bearings are used in Trojan's line of flavoured frictionless pulsate-in-the-dark non-ribbed condoms for people of unusual size. Here's the link, the white paper, and Carl Sagan's name in the abstract."

I find it ironic that NASA is forced to buy antique 8086 chips off of eBay, with all the ballyhoo and marketing-speak about how innovative they are. Forget innovation, creativity should be NASA's warcry!

 

[Jack Briggs]

Yet, Max, NASA's new policies vis. the use of off-the-shelf technology has played a big role in making the new Mission Control room a much more efficient, up-to-date nerve center for manned spaceflight activities.

 

[Max Leung]

Finally! I bet they have some kick-ass deathmatches going on! I wonder if they prefer the zero-g maps? They could develop useful diplomatic skills for alien encounters.

 

[Brad Porter]

Deep breaths everyone! And.... exhale.
There are five basic purposes for everything that goes into space these days: the advancement of pure science, defense, technology demonstration, earth-to-space-to-earth communications and pork barrel politics. Most projects are a mixture of two or more of these purposes. Some day we may get into the business of mining asteroids or beaming power to the ground, but that's for another day.
Pure science: The goal is to collect data and send it to the ground for processing. It sounds boring when you write it like that, but you get interesting output like the size of the ozone hole this week, the temperature of the Pacific Ocean (as a predictor of El Nino), or a potential confirmation of a background radiation "echo" of the Big Bang. If that sort of information doesn't interest you, then you need to stop navel-gazing and start thinking about the universe and your place in it.
Defense: Many potential applications, but the primary function is intelligence gathering. We all like to sit cozily in our chairs and fret over the total cost of defense spending, but when you consider how much technology has changed the face of warfare in the past 50 years, you might just be happy that your friends and loved ones serving in the armed forces don't regularly have to face the prospect of being shelled to death in a foxhole in Belgium the way my grandfather was. It may not mean that much to you, but our current American aversion to shedding our own blood in warfare suits me just fine. Let me close this paragraph by apologizing for treading into political discussion here. It's very difficult to properly discuss this topic without violating the policy.
Technology Demonstration: Space-based projects are very risk averse and for very good reasons. If your car breaks down, you can take it to a mechanic. If your spacecraft breaks down (and you can't fix it through software uploads), you're pretty much screwed. Every year we try to come up with some cool new technology (ion propulsion, artificial intelligence control systems, formation flying spacecraft, etc.) that would benefit our ability to support the other purposes mentioned in this message. Somebody has to do it first to prove it can be done. To support this need, there are dedicated programs specifically focused on putting new technology through its paces. Occasionally, these technologies benefit completely unrelated business sectors, but usually the benefits are felt by future space-based programs.
Communications: Do you have DirecTV? How about XM Radio? Or maybe one of those global phone systems? Those satellite dishes on the side of your house aren't pointing at the tree next door. Without the infrastructure and technology development work done by NASA and its industry partners in the second half of the 20th century, I can guarantee you that your DirecTV subscription fees would not be competitive with cable.
Politics: I know it's shocking, but members of Congress who like to get re-elected often find that money flowing to government contractors in their districts actually helps their chances at staying in office. This is seldom a stand-alone purpose for a space-based project, but it is often the sustaining reason for keeping a cost-overrunning program alive.
Note that I didn't mention "exploration" as a purpose of our presence in space. Voyager, Galileo, Cassini and even Pathfinder can be considered exploration projects, but their real goal is to gather scientific data about the nature of our solar system. They certainly aren't exploring in the Columbus sense of the term. Unfortunately for all of us, we are several generations away from zipping about the galaxy having adventures in some sort of "star trek". I'm concerned that this entire thread has been reduced to a discussion on "space exploration", as if this term could be applied generically to all of our activities. If you want to make that argument that the cost-benefit analysis for scientific inquiry in space is grossly imbalanced in terms of cost, then make that argument. For a vast number of projects, I will completely agree with you. If you want to argue that remote-sensing satellites that provide us battlefield awareness give us an unsportsmanlike advantage over our cave-dwelling enemies, then find a forum that permits thorough discussion of that topic and make that argument. If you want to argue that nobody needs 150 channels and NBA ticket and Dolby Digital and Hi-def signals, then you are definitely in the wrong forum.
Arguments that suggest that $100 space pens are representative of the entire aerospace industry or that one picture of deep space from Hubble justifies every penny ever spent both miss the point equally. Everyone in the industry can offer anecdotes about waste, mismanagement, and nearsighted policy objectives. As soon as someone finds me an industry where this isn't the case, I'll shed a tear and sing a sad song. In the meantime, I'll be glad that I can continue to work on making our future presence in space a reality, even in my small way.
For those of you that only get "aroused" by manned missions, then I'm curious about what the appeal is for you. There is certainly a vicarious thrill of seeing what mankind can achieve, but the principal point of the exploration naysayers in this thread has been "what do you do when you get there?". What is the point of exploration for exploration's sake? In the absence of Cold War political posturing, I don't see how to unite a jaded public behind a manned Mars mission. For a science-junkie like myself, I'd rather realize the cost and schedule benefits that unmanned projects provide than spend billions to plant a footprint. Quoting the originally linked article:

Sean O'Keefe shies away from embracing specific destinations - be they Pluto, Mars, or anywhere else. He has said that we should only pick a destination if going to that destination is the best way to answer valid questions - questions backed by solid science. Fair enough. Going somewhere simply because some people feel some grand compulsion to go - and to do so at a huge societal cost - is not enough. There has to be a clear scientific reason to go.

In other words, let's not go to Mars just so we can say we went to Mars. I agree completely. I guess I don't dislike O'Keefe as much as I thought I would.
Those of you who read this entire message may need a temple massage or a bubble bath to recover.
Brad

 

[Graham Perks]

Nice attitude. "If you don't agree with me, leave." Gotta love free speech. America's true "indiginous people", what little remain of them, deserve more respect.

I wanted to clear this up. The "nice attitude" got me. I think this is a misunderstanding of what I was trying to say. I was saying that if you think all we will do is spoil anywhere we explore, you should go back to wherever your ancestors explored from. Afterall, you being wherever you are is a product of your ancestors exploring and "spoiling". Try to undo some of their spoiling handiwork by going backwards. We should set everything back as though ships never sailed to the Americas. I'm not suggesting anyone will really do that

I'd be very happy if the Moon were spoiled with a few domes and buildings and southern-crater ice mines. They could have the Galaxy's *best* roller coasters in that gravity!! Their tourist board would have a tough time coming up with photos. It's not exactly Hawaii The prettiest thing to look at would be the Earth!

(BTW, Nice post, Brad.)

 

[BrianW]

Great post, Brad. Thanks for joining the discussion and contributing your expertise.

Arguments that suggest that $100 space pens are representative of the entire aerospace industry or that one picture of deep space from Hubble justifies every penny ever spent both miss the point equally.

I like to think of myself as a pragmatist, but I regrettably find myself in the latter category you described more often than common sense should allow. Your point has been noted and taken to heart.
You’ve crystallized the finer points of the discussion to the degree that I’m not sure what more needs to be said. No doubt, someone will come along and prove me wrong.
I gotta go. My bath is waiting.

 

[Leo Hinze]

Did anyone catch The West Wing last night?

The Chief of Staff (Leo McGary) made some off-the-cuff remarks about $100 NASA anitgravity pens, while noting that the Russians decided to use a $.05 pencil. I found the remark amusing since that very thing was discussed in earlier in this thread.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Brad: Excellent! A new wrinkle to the discussion, and a much-needed one. Later today, I'd love to respond to the points you raise. Thanks. JB

 

[Philip Hamm]

Thanks Graham for clarifying your statement. I had read it as being very disrespecful the first time. The clarification helps a great deal.

 

[Philip Hamm]

BTW, Don't we have the space program to thank for Velcro®™? That's a pretty amazing product if you ask me.