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Space Tourist Discusses His Vacation
mooneyguy writes: "In a report on cnn.com, the world's first paying space tourist is now saying that astronauts and cosmonauts spent too much time on mundane tasks and too little time on real research. Dennis Tito said, "Most science in space is being conducted by unmanned vehicles. In my view, there is limited amount of science that takes place on the international space station..." It reads as a rather sweeping condemnation of human presence in space, based on a very brief glimpse of life on a structure still under construction. Oh yeah, he's still publically feuding with NASA, too."
tito is missing the big picture, as he looks only at the experiemnts going on inside the station. however, if he had the vantage point from afar he would realize that the whole station is an experiment, and as such all those 'mundane tasks' are not so typical. the station is an experiment in international cooperation that has never been tried before on such an astronomical scale (no pun intended). even living and working in space is still an experiment. human exploraiton of space is not even fifty years old and it would be foolish otherwise to think that we know all that there is to know about just being there. there is a wonderful scientific experiment going on up there and it involves the whole station and the thousands of people making it possible. this experiment is more pertanent than any of that two days worth of science that tito claims the astronaut had told him she had performed. bieng a businessman, tito woudl naturally miss what is most relevant, and that is humanity itself...and what it means just to have the station up there. the space station is an experiment in life and an exploration of humanity, not just a satelite laboratory...
The first space tourist was, IMO, John Glenn, the most recent time he went up.
The people that foot the bill for Glenn's vacation in space were the American people.
You may remember at the time, he supposedly was going to study the "effects of aging in space." Did anyone buy this? Does anyone have ANY idea what kinds of rigerous tests were done on Mr. Glenn, or why this powerful Senator (who had been lobbying NASA for years for a last ride) was the most qualified "old guy" in the United States for these important experiments?
In case you think this is partisan-- I'm a lifelong Democrat, but if Glenns' trip was any kind of science, it was the science of PR for NASA. I said as much at the time, and even some NASA PR guy on one of the CNN chats kinda admitted it.
In short, considering a powerful Senator could get himself launched into space for no reason-- and even get the taxpayers to foot the bill-- NASA has no right to get on Tito's case.
The ISS is research into how to construct massive modular constructs in low gravity.
I know thats hard for alot of people to understand, but thats what the ISS is, it's a test bed for future construction and components that will be used later on. If someday we wanted to send men to Mars, or large unmanned probes to the outer planets or nearby solar systems, there needs to be background knowledge of how to build these things in orbit.
(Yea, I know I said nearby solar systems and I know how long it'll take for probes to get there, but it is a recently stated "vision" of NASA that in the near future we will send probes to the nearby stars.)
Do you think the first Intel CPU fabs were cheap and easy to build? Do you think they were constructed on time and on budget? The IIS is like any new contruction, over budget and over time.
Yes, probes are cheaper, but there is something about having a human there...that can't be equaled by a mechanical probe.
As for Tito, he sounds like a typical rich SOB that didn't get the treatment he wanted on his vacation.
I'll play opera music and let him take pictures out my window and let him do the dishes at my place for alot less than 20 million dollars.
Fact is, we'll find ANY reason to keep people in space. Yes, there is valuable research going on in ISS, but that's just their day job.
I think, deep down, we all know that the real reason that we have astronauts and cosmonauts in space is to keep manned spaceflight alive.
Really. Politics and economics need a reason for us to be up there. But those are fallacious mechanisms we place on ourselves. we want people in the far reaches, wherever that might be. It makes us feel comfortable as a species - being able to do what the other beasts can not. That's really what this is all about.
I for one think that Tito's vacation was a very necessary distraction from the notion of science in space. We'd all speculated and maybe even fantacized of a vacation in space. Tito did what needed to be done. He demonstrated that there is tangible market demand for space tourism.
Think back to the 50's if you can (lord knows I can't. Correct me if I'm wrong). Air travel, especially on a jet, was for the rich. Look at the newsreels. How many yokels do you see? Thought so. But over the years, it became accessible to the common man. I can book a flight from San Francisco to LA for $40. You can't even take a family of 4 to a movie for that much nowadays.
So it will be with space. the market for space tourism and travel will increase. As such, spacecraft will be mass produced, and prices will be cheaper. Corporations, seeking more bang for the buck, will drive prices down even cheaper.
And as such, the price of research will drop. Dennis tito might have cost us a week of research, but he may have saved us billions in research costs.
The inability to recognize this long term trend is a black eye for NASA. They are smart people, they should have seen how this would further their cause. Instead, they chose to take it personally, and for that, they get negative brownie points in this voter's book.
NASA has gotten so entrenched in it's scientific mission as a survival strategy that it has forgotten why we even started a space program: People look up at night and know that the universe has more to offer than this planet, and they want to be part of it. If they grasp and nourish that simple fact, there's no telling the scale by which humanity can progress.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Tito broke what rules? The Russian's are a partner in the SS, paying their own way, and it's up to them if they want to send scientists, tourists or monkeys. Kudos to the Russians for gaining some great PR, and helping fund their own program. Too bad that at $600M per launch for the Shuttle, that NASA were *UNABLE* to make money on taking Tito - for them it would have been a huge loss. NASA should concentrate on doing things efficiently and not wasting our money before they think they have any credibility in critisizing the way the Russians choose to do things.
Three humans in a tin can in orbit is NOT the route to great science. Dan Goldin chose not to grow a backbone and demand something better then what we have now. As NASA administrator, it was his responsibillity to say 'look, if we are going to do this station, we need to do it right.' Instead, he let every budget cut come without any struggle. In fact, he actually THANKED congress for some of the budget cuts, suggesting that they would make NASA stronger.
Working backwards chronologically, these are some of the big mistakes made:
1. Goldin's public tantrums about Tito. He needs to do anything he can to attract US public support for space, even if it means whoring himself to celebrity. He's not a congressman who can operate on principle, he has a job: make space work.
2. The recent cancellation (oh, they say it's just on hold, but it's cancelled) of the X-38 derived CRV. Without this, there can never be more then 3 permanent crew on the station. WITH it, the crew increases to 7. 3 crew is just about what it takes to maintain the station. If there were 7, you could maintain the station AND do science.
3. Deleting the free-flying science module. You cannot do precision zero-g experiments on a rattling station that has to support a group of breathing, moving astro/cosmo-nauts. You need to be able to deploy a science platform and retrieve it as needed.
4. Not using the Russians enough. No matter how often clueless people rant about how inept the Russians are, the numbers are clear: They have cheaper, more reliable boosters with faster turn around times. We need to utilize this to its fullest, and if that means using some hard cash once in a while, so be it. Our relations are hamstrung by the need to 'barter' for everything.
5. The failure to push for developing our own heavy lift infrastructure. Cancelling the OMV and the Shuttle-C removed our ability to fly a true world class station.
These are not the sort of things that are only visible in 20/20 hindsight. This is all well known in the space community, and NASA leadership has shown an extraordinary skill for disregarding the obviously correct path at times.
after tito comes back from the space station the tv asks him a following question in the interview:
what russian words dir you learn up there?
da, nyet, uberi svoi ruki nahuj otsuda*
*yes, no, get your damn hands off it
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
But come the early - mid 70's and the money dries up. The remaining Apollo rockets were turned into lawn ornaments and the shuttle program was stretched out. The space station became Skylab. Mars? Forget it.
When the shuttle finally flew, it had no mission and it turned out to be a lot more expensive to launch than expected.
Eventually we get to SDI and the closing days of the Cold War. Finally a reason to build space station Freedom That will keep the commies from taking over low earth orbit. Toss in some more money problems and redesigns and, oops, down comes the wall and the cold war is over. Name change to International Space Station. Invite other countries to participate. Eventually it starts to get built.
OK, Now the "Mars mission supply" shuttle is used to build the international "stop the commies" space station which is used by the Russians as a hotel for "filthy capitalist running dogs" to raise the money to pay their rocket people so they don't go and work for Sadam & company.
Now what was that about doing science in space?