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Benford on Space Exploration
gid-goo writes "Gregory Benford looks at what we should do in the aftermath of the Columbia accident. Is the shuttle, or the International Space Station for that matter, useful? Or just payola to aerospace interests and a means for keeping Russian rocket scientists employed?" Benford's comments about the necessity of a closed biosphere and of some way for astronauts to stop muscle and bone loss are far more insightful than the usual discussions about where our space exploration priorities should lie.
That the failures are not repeated. I am from India and the first 4-5 attempts by my country to put a so-called 'whistler rocket' failed. But ISRO learnt from the mistakes and successfully launched multiple rockets and are now into commercial launch of satellites. The moral? Never give up, and if you commit mistkaes, find the reasons and learn from them.
"This [going to Mars] is what we should be doing. Such an adventure would resonate with a world beset by wars and woes. It has a grandeur appropriate to the advanced nations, who should do it together."
I disagree. At the risk of sounding jingoistic, I believe that nations should compete with another to explore. This competition is the only way to foster space exploration until space becomes commercially viable.
Last point. What was something on Iraq doing in a space article?
We must revive efforts to design the next generation space shuttle. The current design is far behing what current technology is capable of producing. With enough research, we can build a launch vehicle capable of fulfilling the promises made by the shuttle program.
We must not, under any circumstances, abandon human space flight. We as humans are explorer by our very nature. We cannot allow tragedy to sway us from our neverending quest for knowledge.
regardless of what the Americans do or don't do in space, I'll be cheering _anyone_ who launches humans and / or robots into space for the purposes of exploration.
-calyxa
Decay! Decay! Decay! -Helium
A new spaceplane, designed for crew. See the Orbital Space Plane.
A new technology, reusable launch vehicle. See the Space Launch Initiative.
Continuing with the Prometheus Project. We fucked up when we stopped persuing NERVA/Rover.
Mars. Need I say more?
I'd also like to see a space elevator persued, but I don't know that we have the tech yet. Then again, I haven't looked into it that much either.
Yeah, so that's my wishlist. Only a few hundreds of billions of dollars in imaginary cash NASA doesn't have...
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Did you read the article, Omkar? Evidently not; Benford wants humans to go to Mars. His objection to the current shuttle-ISS program is that it offers absolutely zero progress towards getting there: no experiments with true recycling, no experiments with generating artificial gravity by spinning the station. Instead, we're spending billions to have people do trivial stuff, and if you're going to do trivial stuff, it's better to have machines do it.
The payoff for continuing involvement in the expensive field of space exploration lie not in the development of a commercially viable model from the exploration itself. Rather, our incentive is a contribution to the great body of knowledge known as basic research.
While I won't deny that it's great to gain knowledge for its own sake, that's really not the point. Governments for years has understood the value in making significant contributions to basic research so that private firms can capitalize on those findings and bolster the economy of the nation making the investment. Whether or not that model is viable in today's global, instantaneous information-sharing age is debatable, but to continue in that mentality, we must look beyond such tragic, yet short-term disasters such as Columbia and understand where we would and would not be without our ventures into space experimentation if we were to cease. Leadership demands sacrifice.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
I have to say that I agree with you, I think it's important to continue space exploration at all costs. I doubt we'll live to see the discovery of alien life form or interplanetary travel, but that doesn't mean there aren't quite a few reasons to keep humans in space if not other "objects".
For one, how many technological advances have been created from our desire to reach into space? How many products have reached the basic consumer market because people at NASA (or wherever) thought them up.
Second, there are too many unknowns. Money aside, there are many reasons to continue space exploration (including the space station) and almost no reasons to stop it.
Third, we have no need to stop exploration. When the gov. runs out of money then maybe I'll concede, but for now, we're all fine and there's no need to stop the programs. If it's not broken, then don't fix it.
So, I don't feel that the Shuttle accident should have any negative impact on any countries space programs. Astronauts know the risk they take, and certainly they understand far better then me how insanely difficult it is to fly into space and back. Frankly, I'm amazed we can do it at all, but hell, the internal combustion engine boggles me sometimes.
I feel that in this situation, it's better to learn from the mistakes that were made instead of refusing to take any more risks.
Having been born in the mid-60's, I really don't have any memory of the golden era of space travel. For my generation it seems that NASA has always been struggling to keep it's budget and to find some purpose worthy of its original mission to get to the moon in one decade. The planetary missions of the late 70's and 80's were exciting to people like me who were interested in astronomy and space, but even these missions seem to be a fading memory.
Now that I have young children, I would truly love to see this nation embark on a bold adventure that will ignite and challenge their imagination. Even if NASA started planning a Mars mission tomorrow it would be at least a decade or more before the first landing. I would relish being able to raise my children against the backdrop of having such a mission planned and follow with them each step necessary to take the next giant leap for mankind. From such an ambitious mission perhaps my children and their generation will learn by example that with planning, courage and commitment this nation can continue to achieve great things. Perhaps, just perhaps, their generation would then be inspired to take the next leap beyond the inner solar system, and so on, and so on.
As I see it, we pay so much in taxes for things that are mundane and temporary. I would not object to a small sliver of my taxes going towards something that is not so much for us, but for the generations to come. Just as our generation does not lament the money and resources spent by our parents four decades ago to reach the moon, our children will not lament the money and resources it will take to reach Mars. They will only lament if our generation fails to have the vision and courage to take the next steps beyond those taken by our parent's generation.
So, als long as there are Communists, manned space flight is safe...
My prediction is that it will happen.
They failed 6 times before succeeding in stringing the first telegraph line under the Atlantic Ocean.
They barely had steam engines running and they were already linking Europe to American across an OCEAN. THat is the power of human innovation and drive.
Now everytime we lay down wire across the Atlantic it can hold more bandwidth than all of the other wire previously put down.
This sort of incentives-based policy is in the tradition of American values. It should be no surprise that such values are being eroded as the 'nation of immigrants' changes from pioneering independence to bureaucratic dependence. The use of a socialist bureaucracy to explore space is a fundamentally different experiment that other proven American approaches to expanding the resource base available to humanity.
In 1989 I was working on grassroots legislation to reform NASA's launch services policies. This led to the passage of P. L. 101-611, The Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990which required NASA to procure launch services from private vendors whenever possible. This is common sense if proper boundaries between public and private functions are to be maintained. As radical as this may sound to many who see NASA as a space transportation company, it was, in fact, Presidential policy at the time and the legislation was therefore, in fact, redundant, but bureaucratic inertia demanded separate acts by the Legislative branch to reinforce the Executive's own command structure. This legislative effort started out as an attempt to passsomething along the lines of the Kelly Act of 1925 (which formed the basis for Jerry Pournelle's recommendations first put forth by his Citizen's Advisory Council for Space Policyin 1980), but compromised when it became clear that resistance from NASA, and its contractors, to citizen involvement in space policy was so intense that serious reform would be impractical. My testimony before Congress legislative follow-up to P.L. 101-611 made recommendations for a focus onincentives for commercial investment, rather than plans or "programs". An example of incentives-based legislation, applied to fusion energy policy, was recommended for passage by Bussard, R. W., one of the founders of the US fusion program in a letter confessing some of the subterfuge to which technical leaders resorted. It is still quite relevant today given the reliance on Middle Eastern oil and problems with fission energy. The point here is that incentives are more effective in general than governmental programs.
The first settlers in America experienced enormous causalities their first years they were in America. Entire colonies were lost. The original colonies included a substantial variety of fundamentally differing approaches to settling North America. America's frontier wasn't built by a centrally controlled bureaucracy -- and there is no reason to expect such a bureaucracy will take Americans to their next frontier.
Space policy is a touchstone of American values since Americans are spiritually a pioneering culture. Let's not forget who settled the frontier, how those "immigrants" differed from later immigrants, and what sort of "program" they had to settle the new frontier.
Seastead this.
I agree with having a long term goal of going to Mars. If it takes 100 years to solve the problems, so be it. However, if we're ever going to do anything noteworthy in space after going to the moon, we need to start getting today's kids excited about space again. I remember how much I was wrapped up in all things space as I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, but I don't see any kids today being engaged the same way.
We need as many as possible to buy a telescope and use it, show what's there to our kids. Share it with the local elementary school (I did this last year and 99% of those attending we're just astounded with seeing what's up there). Attend local astronomy star parties. We need to buy rockets from the hobby shop and launch those things with our kids. Take them to see real rocket launches (like we did recently at Vandenberg) and show them what's happening when they go into orbit (via a space sim like Celestia). Go to see IMAX 3D space shows. If you're in Southern California at the right time, take the kids to JPL's open house or to Vandenberg's open house. Launch ballons with a camera on it and take pictures from the edge of space!
Just do something to get more and more people excited about space and going to Mars. Don't let kids think that Star Wars is the true model of space flight. Don't let people think we know everything there is to know about space. Just do something. Everyone who gives a crap about space should do something, and not just sit there.
i hate to be a cynical bastard, but i can't get past the fact that the columbia tragedy is little more than a glorified car accident
Astronauts risk their lives for the best of motivations-- they want to advance science. You can question if the space shuttle is the best way to do this, but I don't think you can question the motivations. And maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but the advancement of science is a great thing. NASA wants to make the world a better place by furthering our understanding of the universe. They want to expand the notion of what it means to be human. They want to visit the stars, and this is the first step.
And when the space program suffers a setback, when these men who are carrying the hopes and dreams of a better future for everyone die, it's pretty discouraging, and worthy of my grief. There's that moment of doubt -- maybe we are just glorified fucking monkeys who should give up and stop trying to be anything more.
But I'm convinced that man has done great things, and these great things always started with men and women willing to push the notions of what these monkeys can do. We need a hero? We already have them.
I'd like to see them build a few simple bridge cables before trying a space elevator. Those would be a good proof-of-concept before tackling the much harder job. And Catch-22 is that in order to build a space elevator, we'd need fairly good conventional space capability. (Fetching and positioning the counter-weight, etc.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
No offence but _yes_, you SHOULD get modded down for this. Not because what you say is *unorthodox* but you have got the wrong *reasons* for your argument
Pushing the envelope is always done by a select few. Thats why they are heroes. Why are Formula-1 drivers heroes ? They are ready [sorry for the cliche] to "go where no man/woman has gone". Every advancement _especially_ space is taken with risks and the people who come forward to shoulder the risks for the first few times - cheaply put , those who are ready to be guinea pigs for the betterment of humans _ARE_ DEFINITELY heroes in my book. right ?
Why dont we mourn the death of starving kids? I come from India and I have seen what you say exactly. You bet I agree with you and we should mourn them. But you shouldnt ask why we _are_ mourning the death of the shuttle astronauts. They _were_ pioneers who died for a cause.
Thanks.
vv