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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".
its there, and somebody has to explore it right? So who better than NASA. And if NASA want to do it via space programs...
The space program really does need some very visable goals. How about a manned Mars mission by 2015?
How can a space program be there for our safety?
Maybe GWB thinks it's full of Weapons of Mass Destruction? (the little pixies told him so...)
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.
This list definately appears to be tailored for people adverse to a space program. So keep that in mind before you take offense to it not including scientific / exploratory reasons and instead has things like "Protection against catastrophic planetary accidents" that aren't very likely at this point.
Karma: Not Particularly Funny.
Well if we are going to colonize anything and for all we know maybe meet other species someday far in the future, we have to become a more mature species ourselves. Currently we are still primitive - led by fear and superstition, dominated by hunger and war. Will benifits of space and hopefully increased maturity help out the human race, or does the human race have to be helped to mature first before we all set our sights on higher goals? What comes first?
SecondPageMedia - Wha
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
So who better than NASA. ;)
The ESA?
I don't think many people think that near space and upper atmosphere research is a waste, nor the observation of distant stars and galaxies for their obvious scientific use in comparing our environment with others, and understanding our origins. NASA is an important precursor to a lot of the work, and defence technology often spaws useful commercial tech - satellite TV, GPS, international telecoms, weather stations...
If you made this a top ten of reasons to send men into space, you'd have a harder time justifying it, but the debate would be more interesting. Especially since current Reuters news asks that very question today, with mixed conclusions. An allusion in general to space left us with this interesting quote, which ties in with what I said about military tech:
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
...the only necessary reason is "because it's there".
or the more correct reason... because it's not there. Space is a vacuum.
I have another reason. becuase human survival depends on it. The sun will eventually die and we gotta bust outta here
Two Towers-Two Worlds.One seeks triumphs and freedom for man.The other deems man unworthy and wrecks them.
of course, by then, the machines will have taken over, so the issue of human survival will become moot.
These terrorists must be stopped before they can launch their attack against the free world and I for one welcome our president's plan to nuke the moon. I sure as hell won't miss it.
Manned missions are great PR, and in the future we must have them, but I fail to see why we need them now, with the current state of space propulsion technology (i.e., large rockets to propel a small payload into orbit). Other than congressional pork-barrel spending, why should we continue to use the Shuttle, a technology that is now well past its prime? Why not start with a fresh sheet of paper and exploit what we have learned in the decades since the Shuttle was conceived?
In fact, when we retire the Shuttle, why do we need to rush into a new manned-space transportation system? Why not wait a few decades for a much more revolutionary system, such as a space elevator? What critical missions in the next few decades will really require humans in space?
it is possibly a quicker way to get to India to bring back spices.
Im guessing that when the Chinese land on the moon America might take a new interest in space exploration. But until then they seem to be happier spending money on blowing things up.
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!"
"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"
Cynical old bastard though I am, my throat closes up and my eyes water every time I hear or read those words. Everything that defines us as human has come about because our reach has always exceeded our grasp. If we forget that now, then we might as well just go back to hooting, grunting and flinging our faeces at each other.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
OK, I admit it - I like the coolness of NASA. I disagree with the article - most of those "top 10" are not in NASA's mission - but maybe it's just because NASA is a good service provider to those who do have strong, even noble missions.
I do believe that there is a good need to fund the science and engineering of areospace technologies - and the people at NASA are certainly the right people to do it.
And I'm certainly not totally against the manned space program. And being American, I think the US should invest heavily into the technology and trade where it still has clear leadership (because we all here see where industries like manufacturing and IT have/are going).
But alas, NASA needs to do more to both commercialize the business aspects of space, and to invest towards useful goals - too often I think that the billions in contracts could be better invested.
---
If we only did things that were "obviously" useful at the time of their discovery, we'd have dumped lasers, RADAR, the gas laws, astronomy, electricity, gunpowder and genetics.
If we only pursued zero-risk technologies, we'd have no refrigeration (the discoverer died from over-exposure to the cold), no cars (early experimentors frequently crashed, and the death toll from early racing was often double or triple digits), and no medicine (even today, the risks in trials is extremely high).
So space is risky and we can't see any obvious immediate benefit. So what? If we'd prefer to stagnate, then why not just end the world now? All life is genetically designed to move forward, and if we deny this fundamental core of biology, in the name of being cheapskates, the consequence is inevitable.
"Because it's there" is not a statement - it is a fundamental law of biology.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...is that, chances are, these technologies will be developed anyway, and they will be developed to solve the problem directly at hand, thus making the research effort cheaper and the results better.
I mean, so space exploration is going to solve the education problems in the third world? Are farmer boys from africa going to sit at a videoconference lecture held by a professor from Harvard? Give me a break.
I have no problems with space exploration, but why is it that when it comes to space, there is always a lot of blind dreaming going on?
Just because space is more entertaining than say, cancer research, it doesn't make it more important.
And by the way, we have plenty of time for space exploration before the odd meteor hits or the sun explodes..
Will code a sig generator for food
I hate to say it againg but it is money, not goals. I just don't understand why the goverment doesn't spend more on space exporation. Every dollar pays off 10-20 times on economic growth.
If every branch of the goverment paid of like that, we wouldn't have any problems.
-Richard
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
The most desperately dumb sentence in the article is "The only way to provide global education and health care services in coming decades at reasonable cost and broad coverage is via space-based communication systems". You get the feeling these guys have a deep knowledge of how to provide primary education and healthcare.
But the real reason to go into space is because we, as a species, must. It's what we do. We find something we don't understand and we go figure it out. We find uninhabited places and we go live there. It's a major part of being human.
Revisionists may take great joy in dismantling his mythology, but John Kennedy and the generation he led understood this. Raised on the notion that we can do anything, we did the impossible and roared to the moon - and the fact that we were spurred on by fear of the Soviet boogieman was only secondary. Kennedy had a vision for what space meant to the U.S. and to man as a species.
Today, we're all practicality and logic and bottom-lines, and that sucks our soul away. We go into space because we must, because we're called there, and if we don't answer the call, we've lost something vitally important within ourselves.
C'mon, baby, kiss The King.
See http://www.eoc.csiro.au/. No doubt they learned from the kangaroo jump.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
"Prevention of environmental disaster"
More like monitoring of onngoing environmental disasters. The money would be better spent on preventing them on the ground rather than just watching them from space.
"Creating a global network for modern communications, entertainment and networking"
I thought that was what M$ was trying to do. So our great space program is about being a slave to the telecoms... Why don't we just put a giant Verizon logo on all the rockets from now on?
"Global education and health services"
Give me a break. What, are we going to try to broadcast PBS to the entire world? The only people who will benefit the satalites and all the other space based comunications are the people who can afford the devices to tap into those communications. Last time I checked the poor in Africa want food, not TV's. The only people that will be able to afford these devices are the people that don't need these services.
"Cheap and environmentally friendly energy"
Let me guess: widespread use of potatoes to power clocks. They have gone a long way to create operational systems but they still need to develope them and they haven't been put into practice? In other words you have a coupel of ideas but you have done jack shit asbout them.
"Transportation safety"
This is part of the the satalite argument. As for the rest, space travel will always be inherently unsafe. The only recourse is to deal with it. When your shuttle explodes, be a man! Face the pain! I didn't hear any of the apollo astronauts whining about safety. They flew with what they had and if that wasn't good enough, tough!
"Emergency warning and recovery systems"
More satalites.
"National defense and strategic security"
And more satalite systems.
"Protection against catastrophic planetary accidents"
Not too useful since it doesn't seem we are seriously developing any of the tech necessary to prevent a strike if one was imminent(sic). And knowing NASA, the mission to save earth will eb pushed back and eventually scraped due to budget cuts. We have to put saving the world on the back burner cause our president wants to go to war with someone else to boost his poll ratings. Plus, unless the asteroid is in low earth orbit, how is NASA ever going to get to it? Satalites again...
"Creation of new jobs and Industries -- a new vision for the 21st century and a mandate to explore truly new frontiers"
This is the best and possibly the sole reason to have a space program. This alone makes it worth it. But lets face it: they haven't done anything in this theater since apollo (with the exception of a few probes). NASA and the shuttles is like an old man and his model T. He is constantly fixing the car just so he can go down to the local convience mart. Chuck the jollipe and get a hot rod.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
"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?
Lady Liberty is up to her neck, and you've got to find a way off this blasted rock... get yer hands offa me, you damn dirty ape!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I thought the number one reason was that we have to acquire alien technology to defend ourselves against the Goa'uld, who are capable of reaching earth in their ships, even if we bury the gate?
sic transit gloria mundi
We need more reasons besides "because its there" to justify spending billions of taxpayer dollars. Its amazing what geeks want to do with OTHER people's money.
Fortunately there ARE other reasons aside from "because its there". Now we just have to inform the public of them.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
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:
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.
...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.
What do you see when you look up at the stars at night?
Anyway, how about a more concrete reason for humans to go to space? Here's one: Because there are humans who are willing to go. There are people who are perfectly willing to risk there lives for the future of mankind (not to mention to have the most thrilling ride imaginable). I cannot speak for other humans but in my experiences through life, I know that I am not meant to be caged. I cannot help but feel that we, as a species, are not meant to "be caged" on this planet.
Perhaps these people who are willing to go right now only serve as guinea pigs (giving us important information on how the human body reacts in such an environment), but I'm sure they don't mind (and if any of them do, I am more than willing to take their place...).
Or, how about this for a reason: Robots, remotely operated vehicles, and computers lack the physical and mental ability to deal with equipment problems in space. Here's an example: the Hubble telescope. Without humans, we would have a peice of junk floating around with a bad mirror.
Unmanned vehicles lack two very important things that will allow them to deal with emergencies and keep themselves functioning when things go wrong: imagination and a will to survive. Put those two things together, and you have the kind of stuff that brought Apollo 13 home. Take those things away and you have probes that crash themselves uselessly into Mars.
In my opinion, humans are eventually meant to be in space. Maybe some will be afraid to leave the cage when the door is eventually opened for all to pass through if they choose, but others are anxious to get out and move on to the next stage of human existance. And there is no time like the present to start taking the necessary baby steps to do it.
Sorry for the rant, but views like these are all the reason I personally need.
Those pictures were taken by the astronauts on the final mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-107. I can do nothing now but salute and honor those heros who have died while chasing their dreams and the dreams of many of us, just as I can do nothing but salute and honor those heros who are still up there realizing the dream and those who have all returned safely.
Anyway, my apologies for any flamebait that may be in this post, but it kind of bothers me whenever anyone suggests that humans should not be in space.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Obviously Ethiopia needs hospitals and schools...
But what can really make those hospitals and schools effective, and multiply the value of each one of them many times, is satellites. An isolated hospital or school out in the rough really amounts to a few dedicated workers trying push the world uphill. Give them a satellite link, and the rest of the world can easily give them help and make them more effective. (Open Source style)
"If only I knew more about surgery, I could save this man's/woman's leg instead of amputating." How about remote assistance that can give that local doctor a shot at saving the leg?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It looks like they missed one of the most important reasons: energy.
ppl should check out www.hubbertpeak.com
Energy is a BIG problem and the population presently doesn't really grap the issues. Already we have had the 2nd oil war. If anyone doubts this then perhaps a correlation between reserves per captita in Britain and the USA should be done against the reserves in the middle east. Doing same might explain some things.
In my mind - there is zero doubt we need to go nuclear and we need to start now. Yet the biggest nuclear plant in the solar system is the sun and the best way to harness it is from space. So, IMHO space exploration and technology can be used to offset the need for nuclear plants on earth.
Yup - we need nuclear but I prefer to have the plant about 93 million miles from my house and that IMHO is a pretty good reason for a space program.
There is a really good book written by T.A. Heppenheimer that explains this (Colonies in Space). Perhaps with the Chinese planning on a station on the moon the western world will wake up and stop spending their time "administering" and "managing" and start spending more time "doing".
Since nobody has brought it up this time around....
Space is yet another area to explore, but what about the depths of the ocean? There's ongoing research, but much of it lacks the funding and technology. Sound familiar? The majority of the planet's surface is covered with water, but little of it has been explored in-depth. Sure, we might not have a base on the moon, but we don't have one on the ocean floor either.
I think this is my new favorite quote. In my experience as a biologist, this is quite true. Life is always pushing the limits and trying to spread to wherever it can. Though harsh conditions may kill the first pioneers who venture into a new realm, over time, life finds a way to get there for no other reason that because it is there.
In time, we will be no different. We will move on and broaden our scope, or we will stagnate and die off.
Thank you, jd, for an incredibly enlightening statement (and for the new .sig ;) )
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
This is the same group of people which applaud China's attempt for manned space missions. Then, the same people criticize the US and NASA for doing it.
A little bit hypocritical? I'd say so!
The Singular? Why singular? Why is space a program? Presumably you mean it's a government program. What makes you think a bunch of expensive bureaucrats are ever going to do anything useful for you in space? Why does an organisation doing something for 'the good of a country' not equal a form of communism or atleast socialism? Now personally, I'm not against socialism, if it benefits people directly (for example in the UK a health service really does help out the population fairly uniformly- it makes some kind of sense for a tax to cover that)- but in the case of space, specifically NASA, who is benefiting here? A few astronauts mostly, chosen by a bunch of bureaucrats to best spout the party line about how great everything is in NASA, which in turn benefits the bureaucrats. It isn't that great; at best it is OK, and in many cases it is giving terrible value for money.
Space is a place not a program. Space launch needs to be run like along business lines, with some competition, otherwise it ends up getting run like the USSR before the wall came down; and that's pretty much what NASA is- a centralised command economy. These things are not good.
Mind you, it's not that businesses are higher moral entities either; but right now a modicum of competition would help. As an example, how is it that the Space Shuttle, which is more expensive per kg of payload, how is it that it replaced Saturn V? If you had a company that did something dumb like that in a marketplace, they would be dead; their competition would kill them off. No, NASA only survives because they are a monopoly, and a taxation funded one at that.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"millions of homeless in America -- the majority of homeless in America do not (despite popular belief) suffer from 'the man keeping them down', or from a never-ending string of bad luck that keeps them from moving up in life, so much as lack of motivation to succeed, mental and/or emotional disabilities, or simply poor decision making. I'm not saying that there are not cases of cutbacks and financial ruin leading to poverty, but that the majority of homeless will not take the steps necessary to really pick themselves up 'by the bootstraps' and help themselves out (and YES, there are TONS of government funded programs to assist homeless LOOK IT UP PEOPLE!!). In addition, no amount of money is going to fix this problem, it only enables futhur abuses of system resources. When you generate a program, there are bound to be abuses, but in America we have the most blantant disregard for the sanctity of the programs and the intentions of their creation, that we have to then generate more programs to monitor the resources and verify that the programs are not being abused. (What a waste of resources just to verify that people are being honest...)
underfunded schools -- Throwing money into state of the art computer labs, or resurfacing basketball courts does nothing to improve students motivation to learn. Dumping money into video's that are geared towards learning don't motivate students to learn. Paying teachers more money doesn't make teachers teach any better. While there is a valid arguement that our teachers are underfunded for the jobs they do, and a lack of teachers and schools, and in some instances a lack of basic necessities within the schools (pencils, pens, paper), there is not a justification that says that more money will correllate to higher grades, or students that have a desire to learn. Paying a teacher more may improve their attitudes, and may even influence better teaching styles, but without a student interested in subjects instead of sports, grades instead of goals, or simply education instead of ignorance, then you continue to perpetuate the cycle of motivation-less americans.
predatory health care system -- The best cartoon I've ever seen was on a psychology professors door. A man sitting on a couch, the councelor saying "I could tell you what's wrong with you, but I've got a mortgage, a car, and a boat to pay off." I don't think anyone here will argue that we have a failing health care system with doctors who spend less time with patients than they do with insurance companies. We have insurance companies dictating to doctors what treatments to prescribe, with very nearly hostile consequences for failure to comply. My question is why does the doctor, who's spent most of his adult life in school and learning how to 'heal', have to take orders from a business major who spent 6 years in school getting his/her BS (because they partied the first couple years)? We have a problem in this country with the authoritative structure. There should never have come a time when doctors were required to not only not treat, but not efficiently 'heal' patients because insurance agencies dictate what they will and won't pay for; nor should there have ever come a time when the Hippocratic oath was subnoted with company logos. We have a very real problem with our health care system, but dumping money into it, will only perpetuate insurance companies to continue to dictate health care standards, at the expense of your health, to protect the 'almighty buck'.
Yes, we have real problems in this nation, I would suggest you start focusing, instead of on where money is going, to who's making decisions, and on fixing the 'authority structure' that is badly screwed up.
Knowing how to handle money does not mean you are a leader, nor should it imply that you have the power to make decisions which effect people who actually work... and yet every day we face leadership centered around people who think they know what's best based on financial impacts and without understanding the full implications of the decisions mandated.
Eventually, a really big rock will fall on our heads.
One look at the surface of the Moon should be proof of the inevitability of this fact. It may not happen as soon as 2014, but there is a slight chance that it will happen before then. The odds of it happening increase a little bit every single day, and eventually, there will undoubtedly be "an Earth-shattering KA-BOOM!"
What we don't know is there, can hurt us. What we do know is there, also can. We might be able to protect ourselves against what we know, but doing so in a panicked hurry is never the best way to do things. And there will always be a chance that it will be a surprise.
If we are all still here on Earth, when that big rock comes, our being here will end, and it will not matter that we were ever here at all. With the exception of a few chunks of metal we were brave and curious enough to throw out of our solar system, there will be nothing left of us. How sad, that we should eventually be reduced to the gold records and plaques attached to the Voyager probes.
This is home, and we must protect it. This is also our crib, and it's time we grew the hell up and moved out of our parents basement.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
"It's not like there is a shortage of LEO satellites and if we want more, our present technology is good and cheap enough." -- Good and cheap, and without NASA non-existant. Thank you NASA for providing the research that put the satalites in orbit and moved the Space Program away from Government Space access ONLY by funding multinational organizations and space intiatives.
"fibre-optics are much better, unless you are talking about Internet in the middle of the ocean" -- Thank you NASA, Engineers and Physics institutions for getting funding that did the initial research on fibre technology 30 years ago instead of not doing the research (in which case we wouldn't have these technologies).
"ultimately fibre is again the way to go" -- Conformity is the hobgoblin of little minds... What comes after fibre-optics? Have you thought that one out yet? or is fibre the end of advancement?
"fusion is much more feasible than any space based projects." -- fusion?? fusion?? You need a couple Phyisics 101 courses before making a statement like that.
"GPS is useful, but it's not like it needs any addtional stimuli. There will also be a competing European system soon (Galileo?) and there is a Russian one already (Glonas?)." -- And while we're at it, we don't need to invest in research or be a first world nation... we can sit back on our laurels and be self-congratulatory about how wonderful our accomplishments are, while we watch the rest of the world leave us behind. The keyword in your statement was "soon"... soon is not NOW, NOW is NOW... Soon means nothing...
"What we need are scientific advances in applied sciences (geology, climatology, etc.) to analyse these pictures." -- Thank you NASA for funding NUMEROUS University Earth Science programs for the purpose of generating 'advances in applied sciences...'
"it's not like the ability to kill more people is such a compelling reason. Not for me, certainly." -- Thank you NASA for continuing research into technologies that work from space to prevent warheads from killing Americans who disagree with your work with National Defense and Strategic Security.
"It would be a smarter decision to invest more money in nanotech and AI and then get into space in a couple of years with these new capabilities." -- Thank you NASA for funding one of the most advanced AI labs and nanotech research in Universities so we have the tools available for use WHEN we get into space, and not waiting to develop the technologies when the time comes.
"we don't need new jobs, we need to eliminate existing ones. That's why nanotech and AI are important. And if you still want jobs, just open some widget-making factories." -- I welcome my AI masters rule, and taking away the need for me to think on my own. (Do you work for Microsoft by any chance?)
"a completely outdated vision from 20th century. Flying into space will not change anything. Mars is beyond our reach, unless we get really important advanced technologies - nanotech and AI. To truly open new frontiers for us, we need to oncentrate on these, not on useless space launches." -- Thank you NASA for continuing research in all areas related to future thinking people with the vision to see beyond the 2 year limitations and think about long term goals. Thank you for not shying away from people who have nothing but criticism for the valuable research you do, and the professional way you do it. Thank you for not giving up despite the cost of many lives, and many setbacks to the invaluable programs at NASA. Thank you for the progress that most times is not seen or ever receives a single accolade that still adds to the value of this nation. In short... Thank you NASA for making this a First World Nation, and not shrinking from the responsibility of the difficult and hard to explain work that you do!
Privitasation is all well and good, but structure (read: metaphor) have always receded humans ventures into any new realm. Without metaphor, we have no basis to understand the new experience.
The exploration of space does involve every person, even those who think it doesn't need to be explored or developed, since it involves the understanding of a new area of the human experience.
If nothing else, modern government should/will be inherently edgy of simply letting corporatons run free into space development. Many of the freedoms and social enlightenment that we've come to know in the last 300 year is fairly recent - to let private corporations run free in space would be akin to 'going backward' because historical precedence would give corps. sovereign control over what they stake claim to (under salvage and high seas 'laws'). Not exactly a step forward.
Cultural Property laws will take the lead here - once we develop them further! Those who want to move humans into space will have to be more broad-sighted than these posts let on.
-shpoffo
A science writer who is unaware of science. Nobody ever blamed the death of the dinosaurs on iridium from the asteroid. The iridium was merely used as a marker, as the concentration in the asteroid was much higher than Earth's. Iridium compounds may be toxic, but there was not enough to poison an entire planet, just enough to label the ejecta blankets from the impact. The real problems were numerous: tsunamis, spontaneous combustion near secondary impacts, acid rain, release of CO2 and sulfuric acid from vaporized carbonates and evaporites, and light-blocking dust.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
#1 Satellites (weather)
#2 Satellites (communications)
#3 Satellites (communications)
#4 Satellites (solar power)
#5 Satellites (communications/weather)
#6 Satellites (communications/GPS)
#7 Satellites (military)
#8 Big rocks are scary and coming to get us!
#9 Space is cool, damn it!
#10 ??? - no, seriously, they said top ten reasons but they didn't give a numbered list and only highlighted nine things.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Is "terrorism" the new buzzword that every report has to include in it as a method of persuasion? It's mentioned in three of the ten reasons for the space program. This "terrorism" fad is really getting old...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.