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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".
The space program really does need some very visable goals. How about a manned Mars mission by 2015?
None of the reasons given imply that we need a human presence in space. As long as we have to use huge, contained explosions to move things off of the planet there is little reason to put humans in space.
They also forgot the 11th reason. NASA is a government agency, and government agencies must find reasons to exist and grow their budgets.
I've always wondered that if there were some crew memember aboard the ISS and something catastrophic happened to Earth how long could they survive? I know people on Mir survieve for over a year but I have no idea how often Mir was restocked.
However generally I agree that if we do want to survive long term (and we don't destory ourselves) then we will outgrow this planet or strip it bare forcing a move.
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Will benifits of space and hopefully increased maturity help out the human race
:)
Nah, we'll just carry our bad habits out into space. A little bit of zero gravity won't take the "trailer park" out of us.
I think the makers of StarCraft had a good idea of how human spacefarers would look and act.
Is it likely that if an impending catastrophic meteor collision were to be discovered, the general public would even be made aware?
I've heard people say the US government would not let its people know they were going to die. But I imagine that if an astronomer discovered something like this, they would request verification from astronomers around the world who would then be in the know. And I doubt the word wouldn't leak out somehow.
Does anyone know what the government's policy towards this might be, and whether or not they could adequately silence such information?
NASA/ESA are just no longer the right guys to take manned space exploration forward. The Shuttle fiasco proves just how bad NASA is at delivering affordable spce travel. Generate incentives (X-Prize style) and let entreprenuers build the re-usable ships that could fly large numbers of people into space..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
However, the infrastructure, including TVs, classrooms, etc... is not always there, so you do have a point. Better building the schools first :) but where they do exist, you can leverage satellite technologies.
Do not forget that most development contracts go to US suppliers. So USAID give a load of money to a project, but most of it goes back to US companies for their satellite time, TVs, cameras, lighting, mixing desks... whereas building projects cannot always pass muster with the guidelines that budgets should be granted, where possible, to US based companies. Maybe that policy isn't so wrong, because just giving money to local companies often results in graft and lack of accountability.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
"a race as messed up as ours"
And your bar for comparison is what?
Maybe we are the most enlightened race in the universe, who still struggle endlessly for good despite our tendencies towards violence, greed, deceit.
Maybe every other race in space has given up the ghost and socially accepted their darker tendencies. Maybe we could be the torch of hope in a morally bankrupt universe.
Scary huh?
- geological survey data - ever thought of selling that landslide probability data for California to the house insurance companies?
- Water temperature and conditions data - ever thought of selling this to fishermen?
- So on so fourth.
The problem with selling them is that there is always at least one more party to have access to these (start with your own gov and continue with russians, europeans, chinese, etc). There is no monopoly and you have to rely on value added services to make this profitable. Corps do not like this in an emerging market. No VC will invest in a concept for which they know that it will not have the market to its own for at least a few years.Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
...or something bigger than us, to simultaneously keep us grounded in something like reality and to enbiggen our spirits.
I can't prove this, this belief might be the result of decades of science fiction reading and a biased reading of the history of the Middle Kingdom, but cultures that interact with forces that don't care about their beliefs seem preferable to me to ones that believe they have it all figured-out and have all they need right there. Space, although its manned exploration will inevitably be a social affair, is not the sort of place that will forgive strong deviations from knowing where you are and what things are like. The feedback loop works better with some connection to a non--socially-constructed reality.
In the other direction, that of societies that are too interesting, I'm afraid that a society without an actual Outside will find its replacement in internal divisions, that without a Grand Project we'll end up in petty bickering (think of the value of unsuccessful escape plans to the P.O.W.s who are kept busy by them, and believe that they're putting one over on their jailers). As long as we can honestly say, "If we can put a Man on the Moon, why can't we....?" we'll have broader horizons than if the immediate retort is, "No we can't."
Of course, maybe I just want all the he-men and strong-chinned monosyllabically-named inventor-heroes to clear off for months at a time (and die in larger numbers) so that more {Robert Crumb}-like men like me can have their women.
Finally, here's some "Lear" on the subject of the importance of non-necessities, at least as a bitter, spoilt, old, men sees it:
O, reason not the need: our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous:
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life's as cheap as beast's: thou art a lady;
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm.