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Top 10 Reasons for a Space Program
Its_My_Hair writes "Space.com has an article on the top ten reasons for a space program. Most of the reasons seem to say that our space programs are here for our safety." The only necessary reason is "because it's there".
It's not true to say we couldn't do anything. We are actively tracking near earth objects, and estimates I've heard say we currently know about a third to a half of them fairly accurately. There are a number of proposals for dealing with objects on a collision course with earth. Mostly it depends on the nature of the object. Fast spinning objects are likely to be a solid rock and could be deflected by explosions. Slower spinning objects are far more likely to be rubble piles, and experiments show that rubble piles can't be deflected by explosion - the pile simply absorbs the blast. Proposals to deal with these include solar mirrors on a following orbit to the object focussing the suns rays on a point on the object. Over a period of several years (note: you have to know about the object and get there well in advance), the slow outgassing caused by evaporating parts of the object create sufficient trajectory change to the whole pile to miss the earth.
I think we have enough problems we could solve on earth with all the money that goes into space travel.
Ah, the traditional cry of the shortsighted. I couldn't let this one go by without commenting.
According to studies, every dollar spent in space has returned at least $10 into the wider economy. Odds are, you posted this comment using one of the spinoffs from the space program: a small computer. The development of smaller, faster computers (like the one you are reading this on!) was a direct result of the space program. You can't really fit a room sized computer into a space capsule, can you? It's much better to develop a smaller, lighter one that's just as powerful.
There are dozens and dozens of technologies that came out of the space program, technologies that would probably have taken decades more to develop without the spur of necessity.
Ah, but who needs things like improved solar panels on earth.
We have 216 years of coal lying around. We can just use that...
Who really needs better battery technology on Earth.
You're never very far from the stable, reliable electrical grid, are you?
Who needs improved communications technologies?
We have a perfectly adequate network of cables lying around right now...
Who needs improved manufacturing techniques?
Manufacturers improve those as a matter of course in their quest for higher profits.
Necessity drives invention. Without sufficient necessity, people tend to do that which they are familiar with. (Just look at the auto industry in the late sixties, or the current state of Hollywood.) They continue to use coal and oil, because there isn't a perceived need that will justify the expense of research. They continue to use old techniques, because they are good enough.
But give them the spur of having to develop technologies capable of sustaining life in space, and all of a sudden, the level of innovation, the level of creativity, spikes. And funny enough - when you figure out how to do something for the space program - then you start looking around to find out where else you can apply it.
Put a satellite in orbit to see if it can be done, and all of a sudden, we have a network of weather satellites.
Put a man in orbit and have to communicate with him, and all of a sudden, ground to space communications is important. And that gives us a network of communications satellites that are so ubiquitous that you probably don't even realize that you're using them.
These are technologies that have current, direct benefits to the people around us. For every obvious benefit, there are dozens that are less obvious, till you do the research.
IMHO, you have to burn out the immaturity before becoming truly spacefaring.
Another post talks about how we shouldn't put men in space as long as we have to do it on top of controlled explosives. But the controlled explosives brings home a key point: It takes a LOT of energy to get into orbit, and even more energy to leave orbit. You can get that energy with controlled explosives, or some other way, but we're then quibbling about matters of efficiency. Even at 100% efficiency, it still takes a LOT of energy to reach orbit or beyond.
Ready access to orbit and beyond means ready access to that much energy. As long as we're an immature species, ready access to that much energy means that it's practically certain that someone is going to use it for immature purposes. (war)
We don't currently have ready access to orbit and beyond, and we're already struggling to avoid wiping ourselves out. We probably need ready access to an order of magnitude more energy before we're really 'there', spacewise, and that might mean an order of magnitude more likely to wipe ourselves out, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.