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The Real Reason for Sending Astronauts into Space
Puneet writes "An article on New York Times discussing the need for astronauts for carrying out experiments in space. Too many of the planned experiments depend on crew operations when they could more effectively be done without them. In many cases, the crew is needed only to deploy an autonomous experiment."
The idea is similar for the logic behind keeping Los Alamos labs functioning.
Los Alamos does a hell of a lot more than purely nuclear weapons development - same goes for the other big government labs. They're some of the largest supercomputing centers in the world, and a hell of a lot of cutting-edge biology research is being done at these places. LANL is more defense-oriented than most of the rest, but it's hardly a holding tank for nuclear physicists. Another example: Oak Ridge was originally used exclusively for plutonium refinement, but is now doing quite a bit of genomics, and PVM was developed there.
I don't mean to contradict you; I agree that the space shuttle is old, and that technology has marched an awful long distance since then. But my Real-time computing prof was one of the people who helped design the computer systems on the modern space shuttle. They're old 386s (5 of them), but they really are the best tool for the job.
1.) Since their circuits were larger, they were less vulnerable to space radiation.
2.) They were plenty fast enough for what was needed.
3.) Their faults and strengths and weaknesses are COMPLETELY known. NASA won't send up anything that they think they don't know everything about.
Whenever one of the computers makes a decision about something, two others also make the same decision. A fourth computer treats each of the three as a vote, and the majority rules. A fifth acts as a backup for the fourth. How's that for a stable system?
Yes, the space shuttle is old. But it's VERY well designed, and its flaws are poor fuel economy and it's weak material structure. Modern computers and all our other whiz-bang gadgetry aren't likely to be near as useful as a stronger or lighter construction material, or a better launch mechanism.
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
"The reason for the space race was a PR battle with the Soviet Union, nothing more. That reason obviously doesn't exist anymore."
Actually the real reason was to push the limits of heavy lift rockets. The Air Forces and Strategic Rocket Forces were happy with getting a megaton downtown into Moscow or New York, but our German Rocket Scientists and thier German Rocket Scientists wanted to go to the Moon and Mars and they whispered into the ears of Generals talk of the high ground of space, recce bases on the Moon, nuclear missile platforms in space, big FOBS rigs and all sorts of things.
In the mid 60s USAF and the Soviets were working on manned stations for space warfare and recon work. After Nixon and the Democrats starting wacking budgets USAF's station got crippled and turned into Skylab while the Soviet dreams died on the launch pad with thier Moon rocket's multiple failures.
It wasn't so much a PR battle as it was public devlopment of big rockets for military purposes with a civilian side.
There was a broken satellite recently that was supposed to be repaired by Shuttle astronauts. The astronauts failed. A robot fixed it.
I'm really curious as to what government agencies you think are actually doing their job.
The FAA is one. FDA, maybe...but they're going deeper and deeper into the pockets of the drug companies. I'm worried about 'em.
The reason nobody will invest in space is at least partly because they've seen NASA destroy every privately funded manned space initiative with white papers alleging that the rockets won't work.
Of course, when that company goes bankrupt and dies, NASA comes in and buys the (rather clever) rocket designs for pennies on the dollar.
Go read up on Beale Aerospace. Rotary Rocket is also another good example.
Were these firms ahead of their time? Perhaps, but NASA should have been helping them, not killing them.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Drones will outkill any fighter pilot. Same thing in space. The winner will be the one with the fewest people and the best technology. The loser will have a lot of dead people around.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
This argument is flawed. We wont get humans to Mars (which really is interesting and exploratory) by building a battlestar galactica ship... we will get there using Lewis and Clark-style expeditionary means (pack light, make as much fuel as you can on Mars instead of bringing it with you, etc.). Bob Zubrin has a great book that shows how we could do this all for about $10 Billion... how much is the US buy-in to the hunk-of-shit space station? $60 Billion at least.
The key concept is to separate the heavy lift capabilities, which could be serviced with disposable rockets, from human rated rockets which need not be so large. A human-rated rocket that can carry six to eight people would be orders of magnitude cheaper to operate than Shuttle.
See, if you get 95-99% reliability on a cargo rocket, it makes financial sense to operate that rocket. Even if you lose one rocket in 20, or one in 100, that is a manageable cost.
Of course, that sort of reliability is not sufficient for human travel. However, if you have a reusable space craft with only a 3000lb payload, that is usefully large for moving people to and from the Space Station (assuming you think that's a useful thing to do...which I do not) and do research and experiments that Shuttle does today.
Shuttle tried to be a jack of all trades. It's neither cost effective as a heavy-lift rocket, nor safe for human travellers. Therefore, it's no good at what it does.
Re: SUVs, I believe that the truck-based SUVs on the road right now are marketed by criminally negligent companies. They don't seem to care that the 5000lb tanks are thrice as likely to kill somebody in the car that they hit than other vehicle designs.
Magical super safe design? Of course not. But to improve safety requires development and improvement, which is not happening in a real way at NASA (nor, parenthetically, at the truck merchants).
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This article discusses how astronauts get lots of useful pictures that we would not get from satellites.
And I've seen lots of articles like this one explaining how an astronaut discovered something unexpected and that would have been missed without the astronaut there.
I've also seen articles (sorry, no links handy) where on-the-ground scientists talk about how they can execute much richer experiments in space because there are people up there.
You might not think these are great examples, and it's true that given enough time, technology could do most of the things that astronauts are doing. Plus the claims that most experiments are autonomous seems true enough. But even with the autonomous experiments, there have been reports back about the people on board being able to see something unexpected, to make calibrations in ways that could not have been anticipated, to make unexpected (and otherwise impossible) repairs to important and pricey equipment.
The common thread here seems to be that having real people on the ISS has generated lots of ideas, with respect to both science and experimentation, that might not have been thought up for some time by ground-based researchers, and certainly not by robots. In other words, they seem to speed up the efficiency of our learning and research up there. And it's possible that having real people on board something like the ISS will help guide researchers in this way for a long time, no matter how far out that research and learning curve goes. What we might look for is the point of diminishing returns on that curve - the time when having astronauts on board, while still adding value, doesn't add enough value to justify their cost or the risk to their lives. From what I've read, we aren't very close to that situation yet.