Public Survey For NASA's Planetary Research Priorities

StephenMesser writes: "At the request of NASA, the National Research Council is conducting a planetary science community assessment of the priorities for the U.S. planetary research programs for the next 10 years. The Planetary Society has been asked to assist this "decadal survey" by seeking input from the general public about planetary exploration. Data must be input by January 31, 2002 to be counted on the survey. CNN has a story on the survey."

Comments

Re:Wrong!

[Have Blue]

Manned space travel just isn't feasible.

Isn't feasible NOW. That is exactly the point of researching it.

Re:eh, leave it to the pros

[cperciva]

It's our money, shouldn't we have a say as to what it should be spent on?

No. Not unless you have a clue what you're deciding about. This is one of the major problems inherent in democracy: Nobody (apart from the Emperor himself) knows how long the Emperor of China's nose is, but everyone has an opinion. The one person who knows gets outvoted by the billion who don't.

a "planetary" perspective

[raduga]

A lot of NASA bashing, some NASA praising in Slashdot here, tonight, but I think a great many of you are missing the point of this exercise. The survey was reportedly put together by joint effort of NASA and The Planetary Society, but if you read the details of just what they're surveying for, some things stand out sharply.

Make no mistake, it does read like a PR stunt, but its not NASA trying to spin to us. This "survey" is in large part an effort by The Planetary Society to justify their goals and priorities, in the near future to NASA and a highly volatile U.S. congress.

Notice, no manned missions? Do you think ordinary people care about them? In large part, having live people on the scene is something that most ordinary folk can relate to more than having robots crawling around or some deep space probe whizzing by. Its also, tremendously greater expense, and there's some debate within the scientific community over the relative value of manned vs unmanned flight, however, the Planetary Society has pretty much always come out dead-set against manned exploration- its just not their priority or interest.I find it curious that while many individual members/supporters of PS (like their founder, Sagan himself) acknowledge an interest in discovering habitats and environments suitable for future human settlement, they've been very loath to begin acting on that today. I suspect that results of the survey are likely to aid PS in representing their agendas to NASA as "what the people really want".

So... NASA wins, PS wins, Zubrin loses, everyone else goes home happy.

Note, I personally appreciate the agendas that both the rabid "humans in space!" and "robots in space!" camps further. Its important to keep them both in perspective, since they each have value.