Slashdot Mirror
The Wrong Stuff
b00le writes "The New York Review of Books has a trenchant piece,
The Wrong Stuff by the great Steven Weinberg, arguing against the utility of manned spaceflight, which he feels has a largely political or sentimental function. He adds: '...I have taken the President's space initiative seriously. That may be a mistake.' Even so, his argument is detailed and rich in facts, particularly the nasty economic kind."
How can we justify space exploration when we've yet to plumb the depths of the oceans. There's plenty of sub-aquatic territory to be exploited, sorry, explored. What with all those giant squid there must be enough calamari to feed the entire third world.
on slashdot ?*
Oh, the horror.
*Houston, we have a problem.
Sent from your iPad.
He's right, this money is better spent elsewhere. Bush just wants to create a legacy.
He adds: '...I have taken the President's space initiative seriously. That may be a mistake.'
Isn't it a mistake to take anything G. W. Bush says seriously...?
The thing with manned space flight is, it A) provides inspiration, something with is sorely lacking these days, B) Paves the way for more and better space exploration and C) Has incalculably valuable spinoffs that change our daily lives for the better. If that isn't a reason, I don't know what is.
I'm starting to think we'll never see any real space development until a new, radical propulsion technology comes along. Until then, it just costs too much to heave things out of the gravity well. Incremental advances seem unlikely to do it - it requires an orders-of-magnitude shift in cost.
Once we have the new technology, space will be roughly on par with ocean exploration for cost.
I can see where he's coming from, but this looks like yet another piece of opinion in the 'should people be in space' debate. To be honest, I find it hard to make a judgement in such matters when I've never been in space. It's all about perspective.
Now really! Where does Mr Weinberg get of applying /economics/ to space travel? Space travel has the potential to bring us beyond economics, beyond all of the petty social sciences, to the grand future that all of us who have been reading the right sort of science fiction know very well.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
think: one tiny little speck of living matter that manages to hitch a ride on one of those probes and ends up on the Martian surface may have massive consequences for that planet in times to come. I think we shouldn't be visiting Mars until we can be certain of this issue.
One of the things which drives peoples' passion for manned spaceflight is that for many atheists it takes the same place that religion does for others - providing a reference point for the future. Many space enthusiasts believe passionately in "man's destiny in the stars" as a thing inherently good in and of itself, the kind of principle without dependence upon rationality that forms the basis of religious belief.
The only argument that manned spaceflight must be undertaken is that the Sun will eventually go nova and destroy the Earth; consequently, we had better think of a way off. Since we don't anticipate this happening within the next hundred years, however, and we do anticipate the continued advance of technology, why not ignore the question for a few hundred years and then start investigating manned spaceflight (at much less effort required)?
The answer, for many space enthusiasts, is that manned spaceflight is simply a thing which must happen, because it must. And this kind of irrational "it exists because it exists" principle is the same that many claim to despise in religion.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
"Has incalculably valuable spinoffs that change our daily lives for the better"
Like what?
[note...here's guessing he says "teflon" and "velcro"... its too easy with these guys]
Weinberg's opinion is no news. Bob Park already said it in his book Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud and in his testimony before the Commitee on Sicence, Subcommitee on Space and Aeronautics (April 9th, 1997)
Manned space flight for the purposes of science and exploration is not necessary yet. We've proven with the great success of the recent Mars rover missions that we don't need to endanger humans to explore our immediate neighborhood. The basic things we want to study on other planets can be studied by a robot.
If people want to cowboy around in space, fine. Privatize it, build up a space tourism industry, and take the risks that way. But when you lose human lives on the government's dollar, you risk shutting down scientific progress for years while the government "investigates".
Steve Weinberg is a dimwit.
I would have to disagree; and so would the 1979 Nobel commitee, who awarded him the prize for physics. For those who aren't familiar with him, his best-known work has been in unifying the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. More information can be gleaned from his biography.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
There are two issues here - exploration and discovery. The precept of the article falls solidly on the latter. The future of mankind depends on the former.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
Ah, yes, once again we see that famous 1 Trillion Dollars figure. That's 1 Trillion Dollars using technologies and methodologies that are 15 years out of date to be spent over 30+ years and including missions that have already been accomplished and other missions not directly related to the Moon or Mars. This is becoming the stuff of Urban Legend. If you haven't read http://www.thespacereview.com/article/119/1, I highly encourage it. It appears to be a very thorough debunking of that whole misinformation campaign and clearly points the finger for bad numbers at media outlets as opposed to real accountants who are directly involved.
Omeganon
I agree completely and I also think Weinberg is quite intelligent.
Of course, the irony here is that Weinberg himself was motivated by economic arguments to move in 1982 from Harvard to the University of Texas, which could afford a prestigious Nobel Laureate because of oil money.
That would be the same U.S. state and the same industry that supports the current U.S. President who is proposing this space program.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The one thing that everyone seems to be ignoring is the HUGE amount of wealth that is waiting in the asteroid belt. There is enough iron, nickel steel, copper, platinum, gold, and other materials out there to return any investment 1000 times over. All that would be required is an ionic ramjet which could install a solid fuel motor onto an asteroid and propel it into Earth's orbit. Wait a few years and BAM! 100 billion dollars worth of minerals. An economic waste? I don't think so...
Still Rampant, Wowbagger
I'm up for space exploration and all, but I suppose that a trillion bucks would go a long way towards solving AIDS, cancer, hunger and poverty...
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
I don't know about you, but I wanted to be an astronaut when I was a kid. (Then I wanted to be an astrophysicist. Now I'm in EECS. Life's a bitch.)
I'm sure space travel will become (by necessity if nothing else) more common in a few hundred years - but I'll be dead.
As manned space travel becomes more common the likelyhood that Joe Average might be able to 'go up' increases - so I'd guess the reason for a push for manned missions has nothing to do with science or pride, but that deep inside, we all want to be astronauts.
Rational? No. Truly useful? Not yet. Fulfilling? Fuck yes.
Uh huh, but we still think all the shitty cars they built before the Model T were a waste of time.
is that it captivates the minds of our youth, and inspires them to enter careers in science and engineering. Robot probes do this, but IMHO manned space does it even better. The urge to 'go someplace new' is built into all of us, and though the Earth is big, and arguably parts (like the ocean depths) are poorly explored, space most truly qualifies as 'infinite' in its possiblities.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I think the major flaw in all these 'arguments' why we shouldn't go into space is that they always set economic factors as a premise.
;-)
But, although economic viability is important to create a mass-usuage of space(travel), I fail to see why it should be the only possible motive to start exploring space. It's a pretty narrowminded, materialistic and typical capitalistic view on things. It's the same view that makes progress on medication for very rare diseases so slow: corporations can't see how they are ever going to get profit out of it, so they all turn their backs on it.
If ppl (including states) are only going to do something when they are sure of an immediate profitable return, the world has become a sad place. (And we should leave it the sooner
Arguments based on such a viewpoint fail to recognise other incentives apart from economical ones.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It's that simple. Not that I believe NASA is the organisation to do the job in space.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I don't want to ridicule that statement. But the automobile paid off in the economic sense after much shorter time.
Mr. Weinberg argues that there is little scientific or economic value to be gained from sending people in space. I agree to some extend... there is little to be gained or learned from continuing to send up people in Space Shuttles to live in the ISS, eg. to continue doing what we have been doing for the past few decades.
However, there is much to be gained from manned missions to Mars, or from having a base on the moon. If anything, we will learn a good deal about doing manned deep space missions, and we may even learn how to do them cheaper or more efficiently. We will have to do a great many new things to accomplish these missions, which some people see as a risk. I see these not as risks, but as opportunities to push the envelope and advance the science of space flight. For too long we have been doing (relatively) safe, boring missions using proven technology like the ISS, Space Shuttle, Proton, Ariane, Soyuz and so on. All that is fine for commercial missions, but it does little to advance the science. What we need is to do new things and learn from them. I believe manned missions should be part of that, precisely because of the challenges and risks involved... one learns by doing things that are hard and untried, not by sticking with easy and safe challenges.
Lastly, mr. Weinberg refers a few times to the 'drama of people in space', as the reason why NASA and politicians are so keen on manned space flight. I see that 'drama' as a very useful spin-off: something to capture the imagination of the people, and perhaps even inspire them to pursue a career and education in aerospace or other technical vocations.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I think space exploration is a necessity and not a commodity. The complete ecological system is so fragile and many parameters (asteroids, energy output of the sun) are out of human control that it would be negligent not to secure the prolonged human existence by going into space.
You may argue, that if the human race destroys their homeplanet, the fate would be deserved. But i believe, that you can only learn from a lesson you (as individual or race) survive.
Regards, Martin
If Noah had taken that attitude when he was thinking about building the Ark, where would be we today?
Just now, it is not very feasable economically. As technology progresses, it will become safer and cheaper, and more routine.
Give it a few more years (50 or so) and things will be vastly different. I just hope we are able to build our Noah's Ark before the Flood (i.e. asteroid impact) comes.
Stick Men
The question is not 'is it worth spending x dollars and y effort to put a man on Mars when we could explore space in other ways', because that hasn't happened and there is no particular reason to suppose it's going to happen.
:(
The question is, 'is it worth spending x dollars and y effort on boosting an election campaign by messing around with NASA when we could look visionary in other ways'.
I'd say not. They could have made any number of far-fetched plans that don't cost money or show results for a decade -- but they had to pick the one that involves screwing space research _now_
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The advocates of purely unmanned space exploration often claim that the same accomplishments that can be done with people can be done with unmanned probes of various varieties. To a point, they are right. Frex, Spirit and Opportunity are doing some of the things that a human being would have done.
However! For as long as Spirit and Opportunity have been working though - something on the order of 80 days - would have taken a person less than a week, if not even a day to do. Additionally, a lot more would have been done. A trained human geologist with a spade, rock hammer, and camera are far, far more flexible than any robotic mission can be for many, many decades.
I suspect that when you look at it from the POV of ROI based on science collected, that the manned-unmanned argument gets even more interesting. Before using the Apollo missions as a strawman, keep in mind that there would be massive differences between the Apollo missions and whatever US, other national or international missions to Mars: almost everyone on the new missions would be a trained scientist and do far, far more scientific work.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
For something that already costed a big percent of sending a man out there, you are very limited on what you can do, how can react, or the creativeness you can develop, are not so much more than a telescope powerful enough (well, maybe with more senses).
Of course, maybe a manned mission that costed too much more, and with a lot of risks, and, even that finally ended sucessfully, did not needed that human intervention, don't happened nothing that needed yes or yes our creativity or ability to react to things that were not thinked months or years ago on earth, but... what if that abilities would made a difference?
STS (the Space [Shuttle] Transportation System) is a flawed system design, with little compromise or tolerance for failures, systemic or political. On that issue alone, STS must be replaced.
A much smaller Shuttle-like orbiter, which can be mated atop a Delta, Titan III or other medium-lift vehicle, is needed. It may look like the Crew Return Vehicle concept that's being rehashed into a shuttle replacement. I think it would have more merit to the old military DynaSoar project. Such a vehicle, unlike the Shuttle Orbiters we have, is not a truck...it would be a human taxi, with a small bay for some replacement consumables. For larger payloads and refurbs, use the old Orbiters--unmanned, remote controlled. If we can run robots from millions of miles away, we can surely do the same from low Earth orbit. In fact, the Russians showed it can be done with their own mortibund Shuttle--it's first and only flight was completely unmanned, from launch to landing. The old Orbiters would also double as rescue vehicles, along with having additional new Shuttle Taxis ready to go on other pads when a flight is in progress. We can't use single-use rockets for ISS refurbs since the pressurized cargo modules (like the special ones used by Orbiters during an ISS crew and experiment transition) has equipment that must come back. Only our Orbiters have the ability to return large equipment modules safely to Earth.
We should be able to adapt single-use rockets to send new ISS components for assembly. The ISS will need more arms, and a new Orbiter replacement might need something like the current Canadian remote arm.
The main thing I would recommend is (1) just make a reusable human taxi that (1) has an abort mode like the old Apollo spacecraft, where the new Orbiter can rocket away from the booster, as well as (2) a durable crew compartment that, in the case of normal reentry failure, could be separated from the larger body and land by parachute.
Baby steps, please. A Shuttle replacement need not be all things as our current ones tried to be. For LEO, a simple crew vehicle will work. Later, the ISS or a moonbase should be used to create new, true spacecraft that ferry and from the Moon, and can use lunar material to build a Mars vehicle.
When someone says that the cost to go to space is too expensive, I have to emphasize where the money goes to build the spacecraft. It's not like we take millions of dollar bills, smelt them into vehicles or stuff bills in the fuel tanks and set them afire. That money goes to WORKERS who build the space vehicles and COMPANIES that make jobs. That's economically a Good Thing.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
From Blackadder Goes Forth:
"If there's one thing I've learnt from the army blackadder, it's never ignore a pooh-pooh. I knew a major once, got pooh-poohed, and made the mistake of ignoring the pooh-pooh. He pooh-poohed it! Fatal error! Because the soldier who'd pooh-poohed him had been pooh-pooing lots of other men, who'd pooh-poohed their pooh-poohs. In the end I had to disband the regiment, morale totally destroyed... by pooh-pooh!"
T&K.
Political language
An interesting observation by Prof Weinberg is that we could have built and launched seven Hubble telescopes via unmanned rockets compared to the cost of the original, much delayed, shuttle launch and subsequent servicing missions. Instead of four upgrades over 20 years, we would have had seven upgrades over 25 years.
Ok, so it is estimated that many billions of dollars would be spent for Bush's space plan. Many people are whining about how the money could be better spent elsewhere. Let me ask you a question, where do you think the money goes? It just doesn't evaporate into thin air. This money will be spent paying salaries and buying manufactured parts from hundreds of manufacturers. I'm sure that some parts will come from overseas, but most of the money will go right back into the US economy. And I'll throw in how it will probably add some hi-tech manufacturing jobs.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Look, let's take politics out of this. Space exploration at this point in history is about doing science and obtaining data. For some things, that's better left to machines. Gas giant probes are a perfect example.
For geologic work however, humans just plain do a better job. The current two probes, God bless them, would have been pretty much useless if humans were up there instead. To grossly over simplify it, I want the most megabytes for my buck. If a human can send back 100 megabytes of scientific data as opposed to 10 from a robot, send the human. if it's the other way around, send the robotic probe.
This shouldn't he a fight of man vs. machine. It should be an intelligent decision of whom or what to send on a particular mission. For some it will be humans and for some robots. They are not mutually exclusive for space exploration.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Saw a Discovery channel special on moon and Mars missions a few months back. A former astronaut (whose name I can't recall) stated that we will continue to put people in space because no one throws ticker tape parades for robots. I think he's right.
Once we have instant communication between points, and robots that are as intelligent, adaptable and capable as human beings, then I could see a point to stopping manned exploration.
However, there will never be a time when man does not need to be in space. I do not fault manned space exploration, but I do fault NASA for perpetuating the idea that it has to be expensive. (Mostly due to cost-plus outsourcing.)
We must move into space at some time to avoid total annihilation as the sun dies. The amount of resources available in space (not to mention the fact that we wouldn't have to waste land to get at them) are reason enough to push out there. Robots can't do it (for a lot of reasons), but people can.
If not now, when? If not us, who?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
This is an important myth to bust.
Blaze a trail to the New World
Economics aren't the only possible motive. It's just that if the process doesn't pay for itself, it isn't sustainable absent some large incentive. Weinberg is arguing that no such incentive exists.
Hah! The rebuttal to this story was posted to Slashdot on Monday! Whoops! A little out of order folks...
But I agree with the parent, its a myth and a mistake to do the math the way Weinberg suggests.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
To say that we shouldn't fly men into space because it costs a lot of money is roughtly analog to this:
The first automobiles (better know as 'cars' today) were hidiously expencive and highly unreliable machines. Horses were cheaper, more reliable and even selfreprodusing. By applying the same echonomic logic, people should not have started using cars at all, but keept to the horse... or at least done so until cars could be massmanufacured cheaply (hint: ford would never have started massproducing cars if there wasn't a market - catch 22 anyone?)
Going into space is going to cost a lot. Not going into space might cost us the future.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Because I want to get off this frickin' planet and away from most of you!
I have very mixed feelings about this. I think Weinberg is basically correct on the issues. But I do feel that at some point, the continuity of the human race may depend on not having all it's eggs in one basket.
However, there's a huge "but" that follows that last paragraph. Right now, putting huge amounts of resources into some sort of manned spaceflight is ridiculous from a scientific perspective and offers no real lessons on ultimately how we're going to do some sort of sustainable long-distance space flight. What, we can't manage to get Biodome working, and we're supposedly going to have Mars colonies?
Putting on my futurist cap for a moment (much like a dunce cap with the advantage that no-one notices it) I'd have to say that there are three major alternatives for how things will develop overall.
1. We all are wiped out in the shortish term by { global warming, killer viruses, giant asteroid, the covering of all Earth's arable land with AOL disks, etc}. In this situation, manned space flight might add a couple artifacts for the alien archeologists to ponder, but isn't going to matter.
2. We see a continued explosion of new technologies in the areas biotech, advanced physics, computing, etc. In this case, why try manned space flight now? What are we going to learn from pushing 1990s technology to eke out a single, unsustainable dash to Mars and back, when there are so many other interesting problems that can drive science. The money would be better spent elsewhere.
3. We neither wipe ourselves out nor see a explosion of new technology; instead, the rate of change goes down and we converge on a pleasant, fairly quiet future. Moore's law comes to an end, biotech doesn't turn out to produce amazing new developments affordably, modern physics offers no real practical advances in day-to-day life. Perhaps gradual technical progress and the dissemination of technologies to the third world makes Earth a nice, comfortable planet. But ultimately, things in 2200 look pretty recognizable to someone from 1980.
In this case, we'll never manage to achieve the sorts of technologies required to leave the solar system or set up a long-term presence anywhere else. I think this future is to some extent the most interesting because no-one takes it seriously - the assumption of a lot of people is that just because we've seen an incredible explosion of new technologies since the industrial revolution, this explosive growth of knowledge and expertise will continue forever.
That may be true - but I think many people (particularly Slashdot nerds) would benefit from thinking about alternative courses. Maybe we'll have to solve all those human-scale problems (war, enivronmental destruction, poverty, disease, human suffering, etc.) without the benefit of self-replicating autonomous nanotech, real AI, faster-than-light travel, Dyson spheres and all those great science-fictional constructs.
To some extent, I think science fiction provides the secular humanist's equivalent of the Rapture. When asked about an enviromental issue, Reagan's secretary of the interior (James Watts, I believe) reponded that he didn't think the environment is such a big deal because this might the last generation before the Rapture. Listening to futurists, I often get the same kind of feeling that they think that today's issues are about as important as an industrial dispute among buggy whip makers in 1910.
While our sun is expected to go red giant in 4-5 billion years, it is expected to expand enough to make Earth uninhabitable within a mere *2 BILLION YEARS*!!!
And I haven't even started packing! The time to panic is NOW!!!
But seriously, if we plan to make it the long run, we need to make backups of ourselves on other planets, and eventually in other solar systems. Why wait?
-Uberhund
Fuck. I knew California was another planet.
What, you mean like this?
I'm all for a mission to Mars. First, build a Space Elevator, then....
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Legacy? I hope so. The alternative to is for the U.S. to submit to eggheads like Mr. Weinberg - armchair explorers, who thrill at reducing the wonders of the universe to a few bits on a computer screen. They risk nothing, and gain nothing. Not a vision I share.
an ill wind that blows no good
Steven Weinberg is an intellectual titan. Unfortunately, that really doesn't make him more qualified than anyone else to judge the merits of manned space flight. Space exploration isn't about validating theories on "unified weak and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles". I find it ludicrous that anyone would try to argue the merits of manned space flight solely in terms of economics and scientific data points. It's about frontiers and going beyond them. It's what we do.
On another note, my favorite line in the article is this:
"Most of the huge bills for these manned missions would come due after the President leaves office in 2005 or 2009, and the extra costs before then could be covered in part by cutting other things that no one in the White House is interested in anyway, like research on black holes and cosmology."
Spoken like a true theoretical physicist.
"Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair." A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
Someone reads too much Stephen Baxter (oh, wait that's me)
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
YHBT :o)
Can we send the 10e5 kids into space? Preferably one way?
--- Ban humanity.
Algorithms vs Software Engineering
Engineering will always happen when theory needs to be monetized. Why do we need the state to push for that with taxpayer money - let investors push for space travel thru private ventures - it is after all, a speculative venture.
Seriously people, in the evolution of humanity, it is always fundamental science that is responsible for those huge leaps in progress. All engineering does is verification. eg. You can theorize and "prove" conclusively that space travel is feasible. Actually travelling in space is simply verifying that theorem.
People need a course in hard math, you know, third order differential equations & stuff of that nature, to appreciate that distinction. Most of what makes Computer Science so effective today - - those rigorous algorithms - were invented in the 60s & 70s. But geeks take more pride in Moore's law & chipspeeds & RAM size & so on. That's just engineering, its not that hard ( comparitively speaking ).
If I had a billion dollars to burn, rather than fund a pipedream like putting humans on Mars, I'd spend 900 million on eradicating malaria & smallpox & things like that which kill millions in Africa even today...who can think of space when real people around you are dying ? And I'd use 100 million to fund 10,000 scientists under 25, for research in Fundamental Sciences - math, physics, theoretical CS, that kind of stuff.
Remember - Engineering will always happen when theory needs to be monetized.
We still need to develop new launch technologies for the non-manned missions and even near-Earth stuff to make space more economically viable. People are already looking into space elevators and laser launch systems and other techniques. IF that's what you want, then fund that more. No need for some blowout manned mission target.
--- Ban humanity.
On the timescales on speaks of when considering deploying permanent bases of humans on the moon, we face a serious issue in the hubbert oil peak problem, which will eventually crash our oil-based economy unless we come up with a new plentiful energy resource. Most "alternative" methods we have today simply make things more efficient on a global scale and are incapable of replacing the oil dependency. One of the most probable and workable solutions in the long term view is that we finish the current ongoing work to build stable fusion reactors here on earth for power. One of the best fuel sources around for them is to strip mine the moon for Helium3. I think the realization of the importance of these things is the driving force behind the president's renewed interest in space and the moon.
11*43+456^2
and then the moderator should be metamodded to hell and back! (what are you on? you buying from SCO?)
Obviously someone wasn't reading Slashdot on Monday.
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
First, you can't possibly meet che challenges for tomorrow unless you begin seriously addressing them today. This includes issues from population overcrowding, space arms race to depletion of resources.
Second, it will always be more exciting for humans to see other humans taking risks to push the knowledge and experience envelope. Similarly, I don't dream of the day I can toss a rock into space. I dream of the day I can visit space.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
maybe we can create our own destiny ;-)
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
The point is NOT that Manned space flight is more cost-efficient. The point can be summed up in one statement:
"No Buck Rogers, No bucks."
Support for robotic exploration is limited. Can you say "JIMO" (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter)? Or Kuiper Express?
Even with the the success of Spirit/Opportunity, these valuable missions are endangered. (Kuiper is all but dead - it's on hold and the probablity of restart prior to a rapidly approaching launch window are slim to none. JIMO on life support and anti-nuclear Hysterics are yanking on the respirator plug.)
Only the presence of humans has the possibility of of sparking the imagination. No child dreams of growing up to be "Spirit." Plenty dream of being an astronaut.
Hell yeah. I think we can all agree you'll probably be able to build a computer smarter than any astronaut into a Palm Pilot before getting to Mars costs less than $100 a pound, so why are we all saying human space travel is innevitable? What ought to be innevitable is leaving the whole thing up to robots.
If you want people on Mars, or even just good science done there, I think you're way better off putting your work into building an autonomous bunker-building, concrete-mixing, block-stacking machine to build you a nice, permanent HQ.
I want the most megabytes for my buck
Then you want the unmanned missions. Google around for it. You will be amazed at the huge disparity in costs, manned vs unmanned. Absolutely all science done on the space station or any manned platform could have been done by robots (other than science on humans in space). Every science claim that NASA has made by humans in space could have been done by robots or on the ground. Even their big perfect crystal claims have been shown to be overblown, they never made crystals in space that could not have been made on the ground or by machines in space.
As for cost, look at these rovers, what, $200M each or both? A manned mission would be a hundred times as expensive, and altho it might well return more data, it would not necessarily return a lot more useful data. A hundred signs of ancient water is not much more convincng than the few found by the rovers.
If you want bang for the buck, you want machines.
Now me, the only reason that I think proper for humans in space is adventure and tourism. All that guff about spreading to a different planet or star to have redundancy in case of a comet disaster wiping us out, well great, it ain't going to happen on the current crop of expensive launchers, it's going to happen because tourists flood the orbital hotels and cities and want to take trips to Mars, not because a few humans take a long expensive "science" trip.
Infuriate left and right
I wasn't ignoring economics, that's why I said it's needed to get mass-useage of space(travel). But profit shouldn't and isn't the only motivator. I'm a bit puzzled by the 'large' incentive. When is large large enough? I would put it to you, that there are intrinsical human motivations (such as the will to explore) that are as valid as any economical ones. Is that large enough? Well, that depends, again, on the view you have. States and governments seem to be quite willing to spend money on spacetravel. And as with numerous other projects and services, they sponsor it by tax-payers' money. So, if you think the non-economic incentives are not large enough, I don't see how your latter part of the argument could be right. Certainly, spacetravel (including human spacetravel) doesn't pay for itself (yet), and yet, it has been sustained for more then 50 years, something a corporation would find extremely hard to do. Thus, clearly, the incentive exists and is great enough, or your argument that it can't be sustained if it doesn't pay for itself is not correct.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
I know that this will sound quite polemical in the slashdot environment, but why should we continue to funnel billions upon billions of dollars into a space program when there are so many other (more important) causes the government could be spending that money? (I know many of you will reply the Iraq war is another waste - but lets stick to space for now).
I agree that the data we have collected from Mars is interesting from a scientific point of view, but is this really going to change the face of science? It seems like we launch all of these space missions for marginal scientific benefit at best. Putting human lives in danger to send them to a planet we are pretty darn sure is devoid of life seems quite silly to me. We keep going there and basically find out that Mars is red, has some rocks and soil, and may have had water eons ago. This info does not lead me to a conclusion that further investigatory efforts are necessary.
Instead, politicians (some well-intentioned, some filled with hubris) want to pour more money in the space program. Granted, this may help the job market and the economy, but there are a myriad of other "terrestrial" issues that need to be taken care of first - Health Care, Welfare Reform, Free Speech, etc.
There will never be a time when moving mass quantities of people makes sense. The economics are that flying you to another planet will cost more than the total amount of useful work that you do in your lifetime, even if you didn't spend time on /.
Sending DNA is the only likely method of colonizing extrasolar planets. No giant colony ships, no band of hardy explorers in "hypersleep".
Besides, AI is just around the corner. I read about in Popular Science in 1975.
I don't see that discussed very often. Most 'can' or 'should it be done' articles just look at the hardware side.
Most couldn't stand to be around a relative or husband-wife 24 hours a day for a few weeks.
Is it likely that we can keep several people in constant close proximity for a couple of years without one of them 'losing it' and splattering the inside of the craft with blood?
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
His proposal increases NASA's budget by a miniscule amount. He talk big, but it is all rhetoric.
Don't forget, it is an election year. This is just his ploy to get on the side of the scientific community.
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
Lets face it, that's why we have counterbalances (or we ought to have, anyway) for corporations, such as states and governments - and even groups of individuals; see http://planetarysociety.org. If we hadn't, a lot of services, projects and the major part of the academic world would cease to exist.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
We don't *need* to endanger the robots either. The economic benefits of knowing there was water on Mars are pretty limited.
Human beings aren't particularly necessary either for that matter. You don't buy health insurance for your family because they are *necessary*.
The argument that there are better things to spend the money on is always true for everything. Why waste all that money on making the old people live longer? Spend it on the middle-aged.. the young, the teenagers.. the children.. the babies.. the sick babies.. umpty-trillion for this single kid here before he dies! Quick!
There's nothing new here... Manned exploration is more expensive than unmanned.. unmanned can do most of what manned can.. no exploration at all can achieve a great deal of what unmanned can do.. spend the money on the Large Hadron Collider instead, or a new bio lab, or a new chemistry set for the President.
It's not going to get easier and cheaper unless we try - and it should be a worldwide effort, no need to rush (Man on Mars by 2010! er 2020! er.. can we have another Trillion dollars?) but we need to start right away.
Untrue. Roughly one third of NASAs budget (5 billion of 15 billion) is devoted to manned space flight.
Quote: After the former President Bush announced a similar initiative in 1989, NASA estimated that the cost of sending astronauts to the moon and Mars would be either $471 billion or $541 billion in 1991 dollars, depending on the method of calculation. This is roughly $900 billion in today's dollars. Whatever cost may be estimated by NASA for the new initiative, we can expect cost overruns like those that have often accompanied big NASA programs. (In 1984 NASA estimated that it would cost $8 billion to put the International Space Station in place, not counting the cost of using it. I have seen figures for its cost so far ranging from $25 billion to $60 billion, and the station is far from finished.) Let's not haggle over a hundred billion dollars more or less--I'll estimate that the President's new initiative will cost nearly a trillion dollars.
This old figure has been comprehensively debunked. The 1989 initiative was used as a dream sheet for every blue-sky project in NASA over the next twenty years, with no attempt at reducing costs anywhere and then inflated by 50% anyway. Taking that figure, adjusting for inflation (approx. 1.6 multiplier, giving 750-865 billion), taking the higher figure, rounding it up and then adding 100 billion on top anyway does not seem to be an unbiased type of approach. Another way to put it would be that every blue sky project that NASA had in 1989, less the deliberate 50% addition and extra roundings up, would be 314-361 billion in 1989 dollars; 502-577 billion in todays dollars. For every blue sky project. Over 20 years.Quote:Compare this with the $820 million cost of recently sending the robots Spirit and Opportunity to Mars, roughly one thousandth the cost of the President's initiative.
And roughly one-thousandth the utility of a manned mission (for a summary of the humans versus robots debate please see robots versus humans Not to mention that the program of Lunar Base plus Manned Mars program will be unlikely to be anywhere near one thousand times the price of Spirit and Opportunity.
Quote: It had been hoped that the shuttle, because reusable, would reduce the cost of putting satellites in orbit. Instead, while it costs about $3,000 a pound to use unmanned rockets to put satellites in orbit, the cost of doing this with the shuttle is about $10,000 a pound. The physicist Robert Park has pointed out that at this rate, even if lead could be turned into gold in orbit, it would not pay to send it up on the shuttle.
Indeed, the shuttle is the least cost effective vehicle for space travel. Unlike, for example, Soyuz. I also agree that manning the launch of payloads that can be unmanned is not at all essential.
(Skimming through, because I have to get back to work)... Quote: After NASA had pushed the Apollo program to the point where people stopped watching lunar landings on television, it canceled Apollo 18 and 19, the missions that were to be specifically devoted to scientific research.
Which implies that no other Apollos were specifically dedicated to scientific research. Apollos 15, 16 and 17 were dedicated to scientific research; when NASA had to cancel two landings originally, it cancelled the original Apollo 15 (which wasn't dedicated to scientific research) and Apollo 20. 18 and 19 were chopped later, after the "J-series" missions (scientific research) were in full swing. No other missions could be cancelled.
Oops, gotta go. Boss is coming ...
I disagree about Skylon, because although it's engine (http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/main.php?content =sabre) seems very nice and clever, it is probably quite difficult to implement. The idea of cooling air down and then pumping it into a combustion chamber is great, but is likely to suffer from the problems of dust and condensed water and carbon dioxide in the 'plumbing'. Maybe they need to pump in lots of anti-freeze?!
I also look forward to dramatically cheaper launch technology, but they many problems. For instance (Sc)ramjets' thrust/weight ratio sucks, and who's going to make all those nanotubes for the space elevator?
Anyone who has a solution, please post it so I can steal the idea and become an interplanetary shipping magnate. Ta.
This is not a sig
Yes, let's continue exploring both at the same time. I personally don't think we'd gain any benefits from sending NASA underwater. ;)
National Aquatics and Submariner Administration?
So are we supposed to be f*$@ing pi$$ed that we're sending people to space? Or that we're not going to send them to rescue the hubble?
1: If LaunchingMenInSpace Is True then OutRage(Cost)
2: If LaunchingMenInSpace Is False then OutRage(Science)
3: GoTo 1
Here's one for the utopian space-heads out there: given that spacecraft can only be manufactured on earth, and that a typical MIR / Salyut / ISS type string of tincans has a design lifetime of the order of 10 years, and that there's a distinct limit to the sort of repairs that can be performed on orbit - clearly humans will /never/ make it out of the solar system. To be honest I think Mars is an extraordinarily ambitious target. It's easy to dismiss the obstancles and difficulties in a hand-waving way but in the real world, if it could realistically be built, speculative engineers at the major aerospace cos will be doodling designs on napkins. Small, lemon soaked paper napkins.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
In the article, the author poses the question, what value would there be in sending humans into space. The answer is: slave labor. Where do you think Martha Stewart's corporate decendants are going to have all the crap to decorate their spaceships with made? ;P
Un-news
Gosh darn the beancounters. I wish he would just "SHHHHHHH!" about this. How many New World explorers didn't find their mountain of gold? So I guess it wasn't worth it.
I certainly hope that his Physics research isn't as sloppy as the google news search that he ran as the basis of this article.
For one thing, the $1 trillion figure cited is an widely acknowledged misquote made (and retracted) by an AP reporter. Ten minutes of fact-checking would have revealed that.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
The larger squids tend to tast very crappy according to Clyde Roper, a Smithsonian Biologist that works on cephalopods. They apparently use ammonia like compounds to achieve near neutral buoyancy.
I think the realization of the importance of these things is the driving force behind the president's renewed interest in space and the moon.
While your argument has merit, I think you are overestimating the IQ of your current president by a factor of 2-3. He does not think nor plan beyond re-election.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
Oh, but you don't understand.....
Among geniuses he's a dimwit; but among dimwits he's a genius.
Incidentally, I might disagree with his opinion in the editorial, but he's certainly a very smart man. However, I find his editorial a bit disappointing. To give you an idea of where I come from, I enjoy physics and I find the mathematical problems of physics interesting, but I could care less about looking through a telescope. With that said, I still see good reasons for a manned mission to Mars.
The line between science and engineering is thin. By definition, engineering is science applied to problems. When most of the great physicists of the early 20th century assembled in the desert in New Mexico to build the atom bomb, they were focused on a deep problem in applied science. The technology of nuclear weapons isn't so advanced. It's the engineering details that have prohibited nuclear proliferation. When the United States entered the space race, the same gathering of minds occurred. If we would attack cancer and/or genomics with the same collective vigour we might actually see some results. Man needs goals to succeed. Clearly, climbing Mt. Everest isn't the feat it once was. It's the mental challenge that often stands in the way.
Man exceeds previous barriers by setting outlandish goals and engaging in the development of new tools. The field of mathematics has embraced the computer. Not just as a calculation, but we've started to embrace the program as math (see Church's Thesis, Kolmogorov Complexity, Algorithm Analysis, and ultimately P?=NP). Having embraced the program as math, we are able to model mathematical phenomena once thought intractable. The fields of in silico biology, computational physics, and computational neuroscience have emerged.
I believe the quest of a manned mission to Mars might bring the discovery of new propulsion systems. Imagine efficient solar powered engines or advances in a new science of terraforming (advanced environmental|chemical engineering). Could man eventually grow his own ecology? While this experiment may prove fatal on Earth. In a closed environment in space, such experiments might be possible. We may destroy the Earth via global warming, NBC warfare, or other acts of stupidity long before our sun goes nova. Could we someday repair the earth if necessary? Could we sustain life elsewhere?
Of course there is the insatiable curiosity that is science. Is there other life out there? What's the point of it all? Why do we exist? America has been defined by our rugged pioneers. "Go west young man!" This line fueled an age of unprecedented American expansion. Fortunes where sought rustling cattle in the mid-west and mining for gold on the coast. Would the United States be the same if it where not for Lewis and Clark?
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
I've read many of these diatribes against manned exploration. And they are neat. They have a lot of good information, and everything they say needs to be taken into careful account. They show us why the majority of our space exploration efforts should be using relatively cheap, automated or remoted controlled devices.
But they all ignore several things, or at least trivialize them. People don't give a crap about whether the surface of Io is 5 bajillion degrees or 6. There are two things that the average joe cares about - their own dreams, and making it through tommorow. We cannot turn space into a profitable venture without the involvement of people being out there. That may change, but it is currently a fact. We also cannot feed people's dreams (in general) by telling them that "You, yes YOU can be the next great scientist to write the little snippet of code that causes the right front wheel of our next space explorer to rotate in a clockward fashion!" That doesn't do it for most (for me, yes, but not for most). And if you don't give people a reason that they can hold in their hearts to fund this stuff, then it won't be funded. And that would be a great shame - something our descendants would rightly curse us for.
There is more to this space stuff then the expense and danger.
Lest we forget one of the more defining attributes of human beings, it is our desire and ability to go forth, further than others before us. To endure and survive hazardous situations and environments. Our desire, our longing and our need to travel beyond all boundries. To set foot on foreign soil, to physically see with our own eyes, to touch with our own hands, to triumph over nature and the elements as a Human Being.
We, as a species, desire to travel beyond the stars, not in the form of a robotic surrogate, but as a physical creature. We must explore, we must experience and we must bring forth the human race to new lands.
For space exploration and travel to mean anything to the masses, we must have first hand, physical testimony of what lies beyond. Without it, the meaning is lost to all but scientists.
It's obvious, this guy just wants the cyborgs to colonise the other planets first! Manufacture a gigantic robotic army, and then return to subdue the puny fleshlings. In fact, he's probably from the future cyborg society come back to cause all of this to happen... do not listen to him! (Even if he does make a lot of sense, and probably plays a mean game of chess... damned robots!)
"Why do we need the state to push for that with taxpayer money.."
Why not? This sort of reasoning is a non-argument. If you don't think it's needed, then the conclusion follows it shouldn't, if you think it is, it should. One could say that of anything, after all: 'Why must I pay (taxes) for roads I never use?', 'Why use taxpayers money to maintain statues and buildings that have no economical benefit?'...the list is endless.
Were your taxdollars (if you are USA) better spend on the war in Iraq, then?
"..I'd spend 900 million on eradicating malaria & smallpox & things like that which kill millions in Africa even today..."
Well, what DID you spend on it? You don't have a billion to spend, but surely you can survive with a lot less then what you earn now, if you really wanted to?
What disturbs me with this 'it would be better spend on...' kind of arguments is that, often, the people claiming that do not spend a dime on those subjects they claim would be far more noble.
The state can't spend millions on spacetravel, because ppl in the third world can use it better...but spending money themselves they don't do, because - god forbids - they would have to give up some of the luxury they are used too.
Mostly the counterargument is: 'But I haven't got nearly as much money!'. That can be, but since you can save a malaria-infested kid for less then 20 dollars, imagine how many ppl you could save if you gave up your ISP/line/cable and used that money to support all those noble causes you claim the state should spend the money on. So it isn't really an excuse, is it?
Now, I'm no saint neither, and I'm not giving up much of my comfort for helping others in the third world neither...but at least I'm honest about it. And I'm not whining about it when others, including states, spend money on other things then what I want, or that I hypocratically claim would be nobler causes to spend it on, when I am not doing it myself, not want too in any large degree.
PS. I'm not really speaking of *you*, since I don't know you, but more about the principle.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Ok, lets turn this around. That $1 trillion will cost the average US tax payer about $10,000 over the next 40 years (numbers here, do the math yourself), that breaks down into about $250 a year. Is it worth $250 every year for the next 40 to put a person on Mars (of course, this wouldn't affect people below the poverty line who don't pay taxes)? In Sally Struthers terms, is it worth $0.68 a day? If we give $1 trillion to NASA and set them the goal of landing a man on Mars, will they accomplish it? (I'm biased, so I suggest you look at the long list of successes of NASA before you answer.)
I won't even argue whether we should send people (in favor of probes) since this is really about the spirit of exploration and expanding the scope of human experience. Unfortunately those are entirely subjective, but let's strike a bargain. I'll support and pay for your social programs (because I think they are a waste of time) and you support my silly little space program. Do we have a deal?
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
The 'you can spend it better on other things'-argument.
Well, see my post 'yeah, right' in answer to that.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
The whole argument misses the point. The point is not to get humans into space to perform scientific experiments. It's the other way around. The science is there to get humans into space.
I'm not saying that the time is ripe to start thinking about building bases on the Moon, or to travel to Mars. I don't know whether that's reasonable at this point in time. What I do know is that it makes absolutely no sense to portray human space travel as some kind of irresponsible folly, and the science as some dignified Cause. They're both human fancies, and as with all fancies, the only question is whether we can afford it or not.
Interesting, so the conspiracy nuts could look all bling with their gold-leaf hats.
You seem to forget that spending money on space issues means that money is going to end op somewhere. Most of the times in companies. And in these companies work employees. So increased spending of money most of the time also means an increase in the number of jobs ... (which also means more revenues from taxes ..)
No, look, who says that the reason for people to go into space is 'science'? It isn't. With a few exceptions when has 'science' ever been a reason to do anything? Ever?
The real reason to go into space is economic- we go into space because people like space. They like looking down at the Earth whizzing past below them, they like floating around in zero-g, they dig the funky roller coaster ride that is takeoff.
That in and of itself represents an economic argument- people are willing to pay to go into space, just like they are willing to go on cruises. The only current problem is that the current price is too high. That has to come down. There are lots of potential ways to do this, and lots of companies out there are working away at all of them right now. The chances of one of them succeeding is, in my opinion, extremely high.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Thank God someone with intellect and grace has politely enummerated the complete supidity of manimals in space.
Manned space flight only has meaning if: a) You can mine and manufacture construction materials. b) Said materials can be pre-assembled into large habitations. c) Said habitations can be presurized and relatively self sustaining. d) Large #'s of robots and rovers can be deployed to massively increase the range of observation, collection, and manufacturing.
So far, we're only managing basic observation. But we'll need to deploy technicians, engineers and scientists for 1 - 5 year stints in order to make the unbelievable expense of transportation non-prohibitive.
You're forgetting one thing - the people who bought cars did so with their own money. If people want to spend their own money going into space, fine. But when you're talking about spending people's tax dollars, then their view has to be taken into account.
It's absurd. Sent unmanned probes to any planet for doing science...that is acceptable. We don't want human losses, don't we ?
But, at one point in time, we start thinking about exploring the universe. It's the only way to truly advance as a race. Especially if we find out other civilizations!!! maybe then, people stop fighting and we realize how much similar we all are; and that it does not worth it fighting over and over for a piece of useless gold...
...I have taken the President's space initiative seriously. That may be a mistake.
There is absolutely no guarantee that, after scrapping the space-shuttle and the ISS, the current Vision will be fullfilled in a trip to Mars. As Mr. Weinberg sourly, and accurately, points out, the vast majority of the Mars exploration plan will be done after Bush's maximum term as president. There is a difficulty in saying what Bush's motives are regarding the space program. If he wants to scrap space exploration altogether, if he just wants to stop the hemorage that is the space-shuttle and the ISS, or if he really, truly hopes to get to Mars the first step is exactly the same for all three goals--kill the space-shuttle and the ISS.
Politically, the only option that makes any sense is to propose a better vision than the current one. No one wants to be a spoiler, so Bush had to come up with a compelling reason to kill those two programs. "They're just a waste of money" might be true, but if he doesn't have a good replacement for the space program, he's going to look like he doesn't have any Vision.
Regardless, it's a good thing the space-shuttle and ISS are getting phased out. In reality, it may not matter what Bush's Vision is, since he'll be gone before we get to Mars.
That dose of reality aside, here's to hoping that Bush figures out a way to make Americans On Mars as difficult to stop politically as the space-shuttle turned out to be.
This argument comes up all the time. The problem with it is, we are not Spok. We do things because of emotions and feelings and that thing within us. There is nothing at all wrong (and everything right) about doing manned space because of sentimental function.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I don't have an exact cite for that, but hey, it's always been 20 years away...
I think the summary missed on one thing: the article is about American manned spaceflight, and not worldwide. In that regards, the article is right, manned spaceflight doesn't fit within the current model of the American society. Right now, Americans are mostly concerned about stuff like money, terrorism, patriotism, lawsuits. In this environment, manned spaceflight becomes too costly and, other than patriotism, adds too little to the American value system.
But... manned spaceflight is a good thing, and perhaps even a necessity, when done by other societies with other value systems. China, Russia, Europe are better suited for this task because either the government has more unilateral control, or the society is more scientifically-minded.
IMHO, those who say humanity (not just Americans) doesn't need manned spaceflight are not looking far enough into the future. It will take generations to improve the art to a usable state (where it becomes a matter of routine). We may not need to travel into space regularly now, but we will need it within a century and we should start getting prepared for it.
I can't resist pointing out that even your insanely optimistic guess -- that a human can do in a week, or even a day, what it takes Spirit and Opportunity 80 days to do -- means that a human is only 10 to 80 times more productive than a robot.
Now, pay close attention to the difference between $820 million and $900 billion. That's the difference between the (known) cost of two unmanned Mars missions and the (estimated) cost of Bush's manned one. It implies that, to get a better "ROI" from manned flight, your Young Pioneers with their rock hammers and their can-do attitudes will have to be one thousand times more productive than robots, which
I wish you luck.
No. Scratch that. If you were proposing to use your money instead of my tax dollars, I would wish you luck. As it is, I wish you would go back to watching Star Trek.
(I'm really angry about losing the Hubble.)
Robot technology of the time wasn't exactly up to much, though...
1. Mars MAY have had water at some point in the past. 2. There COULD have been life. 3. We got some cool photos! Wow. This is absolutely amazing science. I could have told you that for $400 million and saved you $460 million in cash. We went to Mars, and all I got was this photo. And scientists and the /. community are amazed by this?
We're talking about the same idiots at NASA who didn't even send an astronaut outside the shuttle for a spacewalk to take a look at the wing damage.
Stop wasting my tax money on this crap. If you want to explore space, every last penny should be dedicated to building a decent space ship. I'm not talking some pile of shit strapped to a rocket either. Or some pile of shit that splashes down in the ocean for christ's sake.
Build a real spaceship and stop fucking around taking pictures of Mars and ooohing and aaahing over the fact that another planet actually had water. And? Of course there's water on other planets, life too. You happy now? Can we get on with building a decent spaceship?
Nazz
The problem with new launchers, especially SSTO, is that they are long on promises and short on delivery.
I know of over a hundred promised vehicles over the past 50 years that have made many of the same promises as Skylon and failed to deliver, so call me when it's flying.
Off the top of my head... Roton, X-33, Conestoga, Kelly Spaceplane, Wernher Von Braun's shuttle, the space shuttle, Buran, Kistler, and more.
My argument was that 'you can spend it better elsewhere' is a non-argument.
I'm also totally not following the rest of your argumentation in the aove post: returning taxmoney has nothing to do with what I said.
My point is, that everyone can say about everything that something would be better spend on something else. You are defining it to human spacetravel, but that's just a fully arbitrary decision. One could say the same of money spend on maintaining statues and art, for instance (see examples in my other post).
I am in the opinion that spenditure should be balanced, and that (as it is in reality) a part should go to maintaining art, a part to the third world, a part to non-human space-exploration, and a part to human space exploration.
Those that view one thing as 'better' then the other can protest against this, of course, but their argumentation based on their definition of what constitutes 'better' and 'more efficient' spenditure is not any more valid then that of anyone else. (That's why, on itself, it's a non-argument: the validity of the argument is determined by the (biased) view of the one that arguments it, not on rational merrits).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
People keep hyping the benefits of technological gains from sending humans to Mars, but there are much greater technological gains to be made from a massive expansion of robotic exploration of the galaxy. In addition to most of the earth-useful technological advancements you would get from research into a manned mission, you would also get great advances in the fields of AI and robotics, which are potentially on the cusp of real and revolutionary breakthroughs within the next two decades. Furthermore, the manned space flight to Mars won't even begin any kind of implementation until at least 2015-2020. If we were sending large numbers of robots into space and pouring money into this research over these intervening years, how much more powerful will these robots be by that time? I don't really believe the 1000-to-1 mission ratio that the article states between robots and manned missions per dollar, but it's still quite high. How much improvement would we see after 20 years and several hundred iterations? Finally, the manned plan doesn't realize any of these benefits for probably at least 20 years. With robots I think you would get at least as much benefit, but it would come sooner because it can be done continuously starting *now*. Take all the advances that happen in the intervening years and then compound all of the private sector innovation that happens when the technology trickles down from NASA and I don't see how a manned mission could stack up.
While I agree that the so-called scientific work can be done by machines, it really isn't the point of space exploration. Space exploration is not about collecting data just like science experiments on earth isn't just about collecting data. ALL the data we collecting is about serving us. Human beings uses the collected data for OUR benefit. Even stuff as esoteric as quantum mechanics, physics, chemistry, etc, etc are useful in some way FOR US.
Ultimately, no matter how you argue it, society does science not just for science's sake. We don't take to other planets because we are merely curious about them. We take to them because ULTIMATELY we will have to (the ABSOLUTE deadline for us is when sun began to intensify before it becomes a red giant - it'll boil all the oceans long before the planet gets eviscerated). The analogy I will use in comparison to computers is that we are at a stage of Babbage's analytical engine. A certain amount of logic is understood and machines are built to our knowledge, but it's tremendously expensive and almost impractical to build (the reason why the Babbage's machine was never finished).
So the big science question that can only be solved by sending people into space is: Can people live in space? Can people live on Mars or other planets? What happens to human physiology when you send them out there? These questions cannot be answered by sending probes or machines.
Finally, let's look at this economically also. If we can terraform Mars, then it's a whole other planet that will have it's own self supporting economy (globalization? Ha, try planetization? Not practical). Earth's GDP stands around 40 trillion a year right now. Assuming no FURTHER GROWTH OF the plaet's GDP (which is not the case) AND using EXTREMELY CONSERVCATIVE measure of that Mars has 1/10th the mass of earth (though currently, w/o oceans, roughly the same surface area as all of dry land including antartica), then once (gazzilion of years from now) it gets going, it'll theorectically produce (in today's dollars) 4 trillion dollars in GDP per annum, all things being equal. Keep in mind California, with 35 or so million people, has a GSP of 2 trillion dollars. Say it takes (this is a magic number, I know, but to my credit I'm making it very large) 100 trillion dollars to terraform Mars in today's dollars, then our breakeven point is 25 years. W/o doing the super-heavy math lifting, it looks easily like a double digit return on our investment. Anyone care to try and create a ROI on this?
Any cheesey rumors of what happened to the X33 after it was killed? I saw one report that the project was killed in the public sense, and being 'taken black.' After reading the report on the tank failure, it looked to me as if the technology wasn't disproven, it just needed more work. Had the X33 been treated more as a technology development vehicle than an end in itself, good things might have come.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
While y'all are arguing about the merits of manned space travel, let me just brag about my and Prof. Weinberg's common alma mater, The Bronx High School of Science. Prof. Weinberg is one of five Nobelists in the school's 65-year history, more than most colleges (and, more importantly, three more than Stuyvesant). In fact, both Weinberg and Sheldon Glashow are members of the class of '50, making that graduating class possibly unique in world history. I wonder if their classmates had any idea they were in the presence of future greatness?
The current fusion reactor building coalition between US/EU/Japan announced a couple months ago the start of construction on what I would paraphrase as their "final beta" reactor. They expect to sort out the remaining hurdles during this project, and the next reactor design should actually work and be deployable. I'm not sure exactly what that means in real time, but I would guess 10-30 years isn't a bad range. Considering the amount of space (and land-based) infrastructure we have to build in order to commercially strip-mine Helium3 from the moon and how many years that will take, it's high time we got busy.
11*43+456^2
Only if you think it's a black or white issue: OR you put everything on curing cancer/aids, OR you spend it all on 'very rare' diseases at the expense of the first.
Black&white reasonings never have much to do with reality, however.
For instance, one could easily argue that the corporations should spend a bit more of their pure profit on the research of these rare diseases. Or isn't a miniscule bit of a lower profitmargin worth the lives of those patients, even if they are few?
Or, one could argue that corporations should spend it primarely on what they are best at; (profitable) major diseases, and academic research should concentrate on on the stuff that corporations aren't interested in.
But I guess it feels better being able to say 'and 200 million ppl will agree with me'.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
SNIP Ten minutes of fact-checking would have revealed that.
Why don't you look up some of his physics papers then, instead of extrapolating what you perceive is a misquote into his physics research. 10 minutes of fact-checking could show you.
For example, here is a link of 12 articles on the arxiv. Of course this is a significantly small subset of his cumulative research publications.
Also, I don't see where he cites the $1 trillion figure from an AP reporter. What I saw in the article it says he estimated that $1 trillion himself from NASA reports, to 10% or so.
make world, not war
Steven Weinberg... who the hell is he? What does he know about anything? Why should we listen to him?
Oh, wait. Nobel prize for Physics 1979. THAT Steven Weinberg.
Never mind.
Two things about that article which jumped out and hit me. In discussing the benefits of unmanned space exploration, Weinberg mentions satellite measurements recording the age of the universe as between 13.5 and 13.9 billion years.
He also estimates the cost of Bush's Mars initiative (up to 2020 - NOT including the actual Mars launch) at $170bn. That means that the Mars preparatory mission will cost the equivalent of $12.50 a year, every year, since the universe began.
I always find millions and billions pretty meaningless - to my mind, anything more than the cost of a house or the mileage of a car is basically just a fuckload - but when dollar spending exceeds the age of the cosmos by orders of magnitude, it makes you stop and think.
(Disclaimer: Manned spaceflight is really cool, I support it wholeheartedly and the sooner we get all our eggs out of Earth's basket, the better. I just wonder if, as a species, we should maybe sort out some of this other shit first, y'know?)
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
What is it with this hard-on about sending "waste to the sun"? Does anybody have any idea what a silly and bad idea this is?
First, let's talk about rocket power and orbital mechanics. When things launch from Earth, they have a problem in that they are already in an orbit around the sun, so you have to come up with enough velocity to drop out of the sun's orbit. This velocity, from Earth, is about 31.8 km/s (The Russians call this the "fourth cosmic velocity" [well, they also say it in Russian.]). That's a lot of delta-v to come up with given current rocket technology. The only way to do this would be to come up with a wacky slingshot course. I haven't sat down to work the orbit, but I imagine to do this you would need an orbit that uses Jupiter to slingshot a couple of times on a 20-40 year journey to finally plunge into the sun. And I thought Mars orbital insertion was a tricky maneuver. I know it's counter-intuitive , but it actually takes a larger velocity to reach the sun from Earth orbit than it does to leave the solar system (That velocity is only 16.6 km/s).
But suppose you have a rocket that can generate 32 km/s delta-v. Now, think what happens if you miss the sun. You've now put that waste in a nifty parabolic orbit with its aphelion right near the orbit of our planet. Congratulations, you've just managed to shoot yourself with an interplanetary gun. I think it's daunting enough to realize there's jack-all we could do right now if a big asteroid was on a collision course with Earth without putting a few intensely radioactive and poisonous chunks out there on our own that we get to try and dodge.
We can do political-military ego trip manned spaceflight with chemical rockets, but it doesn't lead anywhere. Going to Mars will be another dead end, like Apollo.
In the same way, human astronauts capture the imagination of people in a way that robots never can and never will. If not for John Kennedy's great vision of putting a man on the moon, we might not have the mighty space program we do today.
Take the humans out of it and the regular people will pay less attention to it, and be more likely to cut the funding altogether. You may not like this fact, but it's how people work.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
My problem with Weinberg's arguments is that he is basing it on what we know. Sometimes I strongly believe that society has to take a risks and fund something for which we really don't know the outcome of. True, sending people to Mars probably will not have the same impact on scientific knowledge as finding the Higgs boson or Supersymmetry (if they exist!) but there is a slim chance that it might.
Suppose a manned expedition found evidence of life, even single celled life, now extinct life? I'm not sure that we can even calculate the chance of that (although it must be greater now that there is evidence of liquid water having been present). Personally, eventhough I am a physicist, I cannot think of a more important discovery than life on another planet.
Secondly, just like the moon program heightened interest in science, a Mars program would undoubtedly do the same. This benefits science by attracting the brightest students into the field rather than have them go into industry.
Finally, speaking as a European, sending people to Mars will proabably do a lot to capture the imagination of the world and restore of lot of the goodwill towards the US that GWB has completely destroyed. Afterall how many people remember the name of the first space probe vs. the name of the first man on the moon?
I'm rather trusting the abilities of trolls, though. ;-)
;-) said:
I don't think I can add much to what I already said. You do not seem to grasp, or at least accept, that the argument you raised *in the above post* is a non-argument.
I'll try it one more time; you (or at least the former poster
"You're putting up a strawman argument. What we're dealing with is efficient distribution of finite government resources. Funds not allocated to manned space missioned may be allocated to a host of other research endeavours, education, nature preservation, poverty reduction, decreasing the tax burden, or a thousand other goals."
What is presented here, is a fact, but is not an argument. With exactly the same 'argument' I can say:
1)Funds not allocated to other research endeavours, may be allocated to education, nature preservation, poverty reduction, decreasing the tax burden
2)Funds not allocated to education, may be allocated to nature preservation, poverty reduction, decreasing the tax burden
3)Funds not allocated to nature preservation, may be allocated to poverty reduction, decreasing the tax burden, education
4)ad infinitum
All of the above statements are true, but they do not constitute an argument why one should be preffered above the other.
And if a preference is validation enough to make it an argument, then your preference is worth as much as mine, and mine as much as everyone elses'.
So, indeed, it can be 'wrong'...but to whome? What is wrong for you can be right for another. For instance; I think it's right that money is spent on human spacetravel, while it's clear that some think the opposite. Indeed, the article gives reasons why it shouldn't be done, only (as I've said and demonstrated in my response) that argument has no intrinsical value.
It starts with the premise that it's 'wrong' because their is no economic benefit in it. However, who said it has to be worthwhile economically speaking before spacetravel should be attempted? That's his viewpoint, not mine.
What I can do, however, is showing the fallacy by rational argumentation (which I would trust the most in comming to an understanding, btw). If one claims something should not be done because it has no immediate profitable returns, then one can claim the same for similar expenditures of (for instance academic) projects the state subsidizes. That includes non-human spacetravel, something the author DOES want to continue: ergo, the reasoningshows a fallacy (because, after all, you have to be consistent in your reasoning).
However, my whole point is, that, indeed, the spending must be varied among different things. That's why, given a finite amount of money one can spend on spacetravel, and the fact that human spacetravel is more expensive, the bigger part of the budget is bound to go to the human-part.
But that's not his or your reasoning, though it's on itself very rational; the argumentation here is that human spacetravel should be scrapped. The reasons given for that are economic in nature, but once again, the force and validity of that is purtely depended on whether or not you think profit or not should be decisive in determining if you go through with it or not. (and then we come back to his fallacy).
So, indeed, I do not believe that people can validly compare the relative worth of different goals, if they choose the worth of it arbitrarily. Therefor, the first thing to do is determine what value something has for the one and the other. My viewpoint on this, is that the state should spend on a variety of subjects and projects, as it, in reality, already does. And that includes human spacetravel.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
If the eary explorers had taken the same route we had, it would have been hundreds if not thousands more years before the early 'explorers' laid out their shipping routes. I doubt if Christopher Columbus had a detailed business plan showing return on investment before he went and ask for his backing. He had a idea, which is of far more importance.
... time to find someplace else to exploit. This little planet is starting to wear out.
What was important is not what they wanted to do, but what they did and 'discovered'. (I have put discovered and explorers in quotes, since many of the explorers where looking for fortunes and how do you discover lands where people already exist, but those are other arguements.)
Why should we go to Mars? For the same reason that we used to climb mountains, because no one has done it before and we have no idea what will be found there or what will come of it. Climbing Mount Everest used to be only for the few, now almost anyone in reasonable health and a good bank account can scale it. The mountain hasn't changed, only our knowledge of how to deal with it.
Our largest problem with space travel is making it safe. The US has become a country without risk takers (except on the freeways), people who are willing to put their life on the line just because. Even those souls that take around the world trips in ballons or wicker boats have armadas of support groups in case something happens.
I say balls to the wall....build something that has a 50-50 chance of making it back and fire it off. If it gets there and back, great. If not, we will probably learn a thousand times as much about what not to do the second time. Regardless, the people on the journey will be heroes and will be written up in countless of school books, especially if they are from several different countries.
Why go there?? Why not...it is the closest thing we have to spreading out species off this planet onto something that is marginally friendly. It will probably cost less to house people on Mars than on the Moon in terms of obtaining resources and creating an safe environment.
Yep
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
"For the cost of putting a few people in a single location on Mars, we could have robots studying many different landscapes all over the planet."
In the consideration of Moon/Mars exploration, this is the key argument. Don't compare the returns of a few robotic landers and orbiters with the anticipated returns (scientific, sociological etc) of President Bush's proposed manned missions.
Instead, contrast the massive returns that could result from pouring hundreds of billions into robotic exploration. We should not be sending a couple of rovers to Mars, instead we should be producing Mars landers by the hundreds.
Economic benefits? The investments in robotics alone could have some profound economic benefits. I don't see any parallel returns in the manned program. Buy a manned rocket program, you support some engineers and machinists. Buy the equivalent number of robots, you could achieve some industrial / economic feedback that really produces some benefits.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of human exploration. But, as much as I admire Astronauts, it's hard for me to see that the benefits of humans justify the costs.
You can explore, but you can not colonise with robots. The will to explore is deeply entrenched in the human race, but with a reason: it has survival advantages. A species that doesn't colonise new territory and adapt, will perish. I think it's paramount that humans always keep their adventurage spirit and keep exploring and expanding, because the moment we will go 'ah, let's sit back in our sofa's and let our robots/droids do it', we're basically finished, even when not being aware of it at that moment.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
The truth is, robotic spaceflight IS NO LESS EXPENSIVE than human spaceflight, when you compare apples to apples. Weinberg claims the bulk of NASA's budget goes to human spaceflight, but that is false - roughly half of the space money in the NASA budget over the past couple of decades has gone to robotic missions. Many of which have crashed, gone off course, or otherwise been greatly degraded (Galileo had a tiny fraction of its designed data rate, due to a simple jam in its main antenna). Hubble itself was launched with a fatal flaw that made it close to unusable at first.
The shuttle is obviously a big part of the perceived cost problem for human spaceflight. Reusability sounded like a great goal, but when you're launching 100 tons to orbit and bringing back 75 (or sometimes the whole 100) every time, there's obviously a lot of waste. If you counted orbiter mass along with payload, the shuttle actually gets things to orbit for about $2500/pound...
But if the issue is just getting humans to orbit, we know how to do that as cheaply as robots, too. Soyuz can launch the same number of people for a tenth of the cost of the shuttle. In reality, all those big "requirements" for human spaceflight (air, food, temperature control etc.) are minor add-ons compared to the sophisticated controls an automated robotic system requires. Just look at the DARPA grand challenge for an example of how difficult it is for robots to do things humans can do naturally...
Anyway, enough ranting - Weinberg hasn't done anything original here, he's just echoing other people's arguments, badly.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Steven Weinberg, like so many scientists of a certain ilk, is just scared that funding for his favorite science projects will be cut. He's about the fourth one I've read recently who are ranting about how 'useless' manned space flight is. His vision is shortsighted and ignores the long term economic benefits, not to mention the incalculable social benefits. Too many pure-research oriented scientists are looking only at their own narrow interests. They're all wrong, wrong, wrong.
Wienberg's economic numbers are wrong. He ignores the data that have shown that the US economy experienced a long term return of over 20 to 1 on the manned space program of the 1960's. (I don't have a link to the data, sorry - it's been 10 years or so since I saw it.)
One might almost say that the American high tech industry was born in the manned space program. Tech invented or developed for NASA include silicone seal, originally developed to seal the windows in spacecraft; a wide variety of high tech metallurgy, ceramics and plastics; avionics, digital cameras, aeronautics, a huge acceleration in electronics, communications and integrated circuit technology, even areas such as systems management, risk assessment.
The manned space program gave a huge boost to engineering employment, thus encouraging a generation of Americans to get science and technical degrees, driving the tech revolution through the 1970's and beyond. Those people multiplied the pace of innovation with commercial applications and new tech. This literally changed America's view of itself from an industrial to a technological nation. Silicon Valley is in many ways a child of the manned space program!
Technologies like the hypersonic plane will have synergies with the Mars project, benefiting from the manned program budget and acting as an enabling technology. If the hypersonic plane succeeds, the potential savings for putting things in space may well pay for the entire Mars program. The projected reduction in launch cost, presently $22,000 per kg, will generate a huge increase in the number and variety of Near-Earth orbital projects, making a number of new scientific and commercial applications feasible at last, most of which nobody has thought of yet.
The technologies created will have a multiplier effect, just like in the 1960's and 1970's. For example, it may well create a real orbital vacation travel industry, which in turn will generate a stampede for commercial space projects, with the attendant operational cost reductions. Technologies for space travel will become more and more mature, greatly improving safety and reliability as well as cost. It will be ever cheaper and safer for humans to stay in space for longer terms.
Then there's the resources. Once you're out of Earth's gravity well, getting around is fairly cheap. Even beyond mining on the Moon or Mars, mining the asteroids could completely alter the economic equations on Earth. A single smallish nickel-iron asteroid contains more iron than has ever been mined on Earth. The rocky asteroids have other minerals - silicon, aluminum, etc. Once we Terrans have established a permanent presence in space, construction of spacecraft in space will become cheaper than on Earth. Space will become a net producer relative to Earth much sooner than we think.
Everything I've mentioned could be true within 50 years, possibly within 30 years. If the initiative goes forward, President Bush will be eventually be looked at as the "Queen Isabella" of space colonization, who had the vision to support Columbus and made Spain the largest economic power in Europe within 30 years. I'm looking forward to watching the next alignment of planets in 2036 from my hotel room orbiting at the Lunar L5 point.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
I'm beginning to wonder if you do this on purpose.
First of all, many engineers and scientists are pro-spacetravel too, which tells you a lot, since they are often in direct competition with it. Take the planetary society, for instance: it's completely organised and run by engineers and scientists, yet they support human spacetravel.
And actually, the article says "Astronomers and other scientists are generally skeptical of the value of manned space flight". Which isn't surprising, because they are in direct competition with it.
The conclusion he makes (or at least insinuates) is, that they are right. And it is THAT conclusion I do not agree with.
Furthermore, I want to point out (again) that the comparisons with poverty and all that, did not came from me, but from a poster that used it as an argument for showing why the money for human spacetravel should go elsewhere. Which I have debunked.
"Noticing that manned flight is more expensive than unmanned and deciding it should get more money is no more sensible than saying that air travel should get more money than car travel, because it too is more expensive."
If you have a limited bugdet and want to keep many things running, then you are bound to look at what the minimum is to do it. Human spacetravel is more expensive then robotic, thus chances are it will drain the budget more. The reasoning on itself is very sound; it's just you do not agree with the premise. Which shows that the premisse used is of determining importance in the debate (and alas, has a subjective nature).
And indeed, if you wanted to keep airtravel and cartravel auround, and they only can survive through subsidising by the state by a limited budget, then airplanes would (moneywise) be a greater drain then cartravel.
Note, however, that I didn't say 'should' (because that would imply giving it a value because it's more expensive, which would be ridiculous), I said 'is bound to get'.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
It's only a clear and cut deal when you portray it black and white, as I said.
But as I equally demonstrated, there is more then one way to deal with the issue, where there is no dichotomy (because it's an artificial one, created through oversimplification).
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Given his close ties to the oil industry I'd say that yes, he does. Surely someone has explained to Mr. Bush that the oil industry has an inherently limited lifespan, because the quantity of oil in the Earth is finite and nonreplacable. Eventually, it will run out. Let's examine some of the consequences of a dwindling and then nonexistent oil supply:
Rising Energy Costs: In the first stages the diminishing supply will manifest itself in the form of sharply rising prices. This will raise the cost of practically everything. Food production machinery requires oil. The transportation system requires oil. Construction requires oil.
Imports Dry Up: As the situation becomes more severe, countries which currently export oil will need it for their own use. As America imports most of it's oil the supply will now become extremely tight and government rationing is almost certain.
War: Large, powerful countries that need oil will invest what little they have left to take over the small, poorly defended countries that still have some, and probably then go for each other.
Mass Starvation: Trains that carry grain from the midwest to the coastal population centers won't have fuel to run. Everybody dies.
As you can see, we're talking about the end of industrialized civilization. Forget terrorism, social security, and boobies on television, this is by far the most important yet undiscussed issue of our time. We must take action NOW! Urge your representatives for more nuclear power facilities! Buy an electric scooter for each member of your family! Find some rednecks that went nuts over the Y2K bug and buy their shelter! Become Amish! Save Yourself!
Love is useless. Also, poetry does not cure cancer and children are too expensive for their lawn-mowing capabilities.
Jesus Christ, can't we just go to fucking Mars because it's cool? Because exploration is a beautiful thing? Frankly, I don't give a shit about the soil composition of Mars. I still want to _go_ there. Why? I dunno, I'm a romantic?
I've already responded to such arguments.
No, I do not understand economics. That's like I would say you misunderstand Darwinian principles and what it takes for a race to survive. Such blunt statements are useless.
Don't you see you are making the same mistake as that other guy who keeps ignoring the basic tenent of what I say.
What constitutes 'best' and 'better use'?...acording to the author, that involves in the first place economics. I do not subscribe to that idea. I think human spacetravel is indicative of the spirit to conquer and colonize other terrotories, and that that exploration is something we need to keep alive, because it has survival-advantages.
In my view, that outweighs any short term economics or lesser scientific output. Thus, what the author sees as better, I see as worse. You claim my view is somehow less valid, because I consider 'the numbers' to be less important then you or the author, but with equal right I can say the same.
Yet, countrary to some ppl, who claim their vision should surpass anyone's else, I'm being rational about it. I'm not saying: go for human spacetravel and fuck all the rest. No, I'm saying there must be room for different kinds of things, including human and robotic spacetravel (and all the rest, because it's always better to diversify then to limit yourself).
I hope I made my point clear, this time. "what's the next best thing we could do with that money?" can NOT be answered in any definitive way (which is another reason for diversification). Take, for instance, someone thinks that the immediate saving of human lives is more important then anything that a robotic probe could give of scientific data. A valid point, in some respects, bcause: would you rather have saved your daughter from malaria or gotten some data from Mars? Few ppl would choose for the latter, if it were lives/people THEY know.
So, with that reasoning, one could say it's better to help get rid of the major deseases in africa and around the world, and robotic spacetravel should be scrapped too, because, after all...it can be 'better' spend.
But then... what about maintaining statues and other art. I mean; surely it's more important to save a life, even if it's in africa, then to get rid of some pigeonshit on a statue?
Do you see where I'm going? There IS NO objective 'better'.
The best thing to do is to diversify and subsidise different things, as states do now; including art, humanitarian aid, diseaesecontrol, human spacetravel, robotic, maintainance of art, etc.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
He didn't get the trillion-dollar figure from some quote. He cited estimates ranging from $170-600 billion, noted that the $170 billion figure didn't include the Mars mission, pointed out the past trend of huge budget overruns in the space program (indeed, in most government programs, though he didn't say that), and made an estimate of his own that happened to agree superficially with the misquote you mention.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
"What is the value of sending human beings into space? There is a serious conflict here. Astronomers and other scientists are generally skeptical of the value of manned space flight, and often resent the way it interferes with scientific research."
What in the hell type of question and statment is this? Lets see, some of the larger medical discoveries have come from space in the past decade. This research can't be conducted by a robot for the same reason new technologies are developed. Most of them are by accident! The reason astronomers don't like that (which is news to me, i've never heard this voiced) is because it could disprove thier research. Actually thinking about space, is completely different from being there.
Articles like this are from people who are lazy and with a small mind. People who are afraid to go against group opinion. They usually amount to nothing. I think his biggest concern was about this administration. Yes, this admin. has a space initiative, but so do most others. Whining and puling like this get you nothing, and nowhere except maybe an average life.
it could be better spend saving kids in africa from starvation. Idem for robotic probes-money. Or money to maintain our cities' statues.
And btw, it does 'invent', but the inventions are more based on the human condition and needs then on the purely technical ones you envision probes would deliver.
I'm agreeing that, on a purely technological front, probes can deliver more bang for their bucks.. but to state that human spacetravel is completely useless and doesn't lead to any inventions is that typical black&white portraying of things, again.
And, as said earlier, there is more to consider then economics or science.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Maybe we'll have to solve all those human-scale problems (war, enivronmental destruction, poverty, disease, human suffering, etc.) without the benefit of self-replicating autonomous nanotech, real AI, faster-than-light travel, Dyson spheres and all those great science-fictional constructs.
Hahahaha! Oh, my. That's a good one. Humans are exceedingly nasty to one another. We only cooperate when it is in our best interests and as a last resort. Civilizations only work because of monopolies on violence and the rule of law. Not because we're so nice to one another. That'll happen right after people turn to eating tofu and abandoning SUVs and urban sprawl.
People should go to mars for no other reason than it's there. The USA will do it if China lands on the moon, for the same reason they went to the moon. It's a way to one-up the other guy without blowing the planet to smithereens. Sending a robot is NOT the same thing as putting a dust covered boot there.
And hey - if you can stash a few nukes there, maybe you can get the VERY last word in. *sarcasm*
..don't panic
He may be right, but it doesn't mean we're not going into space.
After all, humans are a highly sentimental and political species...
Of course, we all know that will not occur. After a brief delay, say a day or so, slashdotters far and wide will once again pine for manned space flight, wringing their hands and shedding tears of rage over those evil people who refuse to pay for it.
To them I say, folks, you realize that you have been shown to be bozos, right?
in the long term (not that long - think in terms of centuries) manned space travel will be kind of vital, unless someone comes up with effective defences against asteroid impacts, vulcanism, tsunamis and climate change. We have been living through an unusually stable period. Sometime on a timescale of decades rather than centuries a Tunguska-type body is going to hit a city. That will give the budget for a space colony a serious boost, methinks.
The state of robotics for doing short-range geological/paleontological investigation work, as demonstrated by Spirit and Opportunity, is a heck of a long way behind what a human with a few tools would do. If a manned mission was there, the cycle of collect/analyse/design new experiment is so much faster because you've got decision-making capabilities right there rather than twenty light-minutes away. A human with a small lab could also conduct a much wider variety of investigations than a robotic mission could.
Not to mention that humans could drive across the surface of Mars far faster than autonomous vehicles can. The current rovers are quite a ways off the state of the art, certainly. However, as the latest DARPA challenge has demonstrated, the state of the art in autonomous vehicle design is not great in absolute terms - and that's on Earth under a better-known set of conditions. You might argue that instead of moving around by ground a robotic mission could be designed to move through the air, but aside from the question of how the heck you're going to power such a mission you're then left with trying to land it autonomously a large number of times on undulating, rocky terrain.
Now, the question is whether the greatly increased cost of crewed missions is worth the greatly increased science return. I would argue that one crewed mission could achieve as much as hundreds of robotic missions, on the basis of the area they could cover, and the variety and dynamic nature of the investigations they could undertake. I would fully agree with Weinstein that the Shuttle and the ISS have been a gross waste of time, and would not be sad if they were cancelled. But that doesn't mean a future crewed Mars mission will be.
It's a makeable argument that you'd get a better science return over the next couple of decades from a combination of unmanned space probes and other scientific experiments (like funding ITER, the Superconducting Supercollider, and so on), than funding a Mars mission.
However, seeing the US government is prepared to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on a missile defence that's not going to work, and is spending over 200 billion dollars to install what looks like a Shiite theocracy in Iraq, and will spend 300 billion in the next decade on propping up the otherwise unsustainable property values of America's farmers (that works out to US $20,000 annually per farm job), I would argue that 100 billion over a decade or two (see this article for a discussion of why it's not going to cost a trillion dollars) is a heck of a lot better investment.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Okay I haven't had a chanced to read the article yet, but I feel it necessary to point out that from an economic standpoint, Cristopher Columbus's mission was a stupid investment too. The spanish sent him out knowing that not only was his theory that the atlantic/pacific was a lot of smaller than nearly everone else in history said it was was undoubtfully incorrect but that beating the portugeuses to the east was a pipedream. Yet they sent him out knowing that the threee ships they were sending out who at best return in one piee finding nothing and hence leaving a net loss for the voyage. But they still sent him out. Same with the astronuats. It may look stupid from an economic standpoitn now but who really knows what they might turn up.
In addition, to qoute Daystrum from Star Trek, "There are somethings men must do to remain men." Same here. We must explore new frontiers ourselves. If we never left our small villages to explore a greater world, we would all still be in africa. Curiosity and our need to escape the prison that is our current boundaries is one of our greatest evolutionary traits. To explore and innovate is what has pushed our species to the top of the food chain.
Why not just send robots? I have to admit that yes, that would seem to be the best option while we continue to develope better modes of space travel but at some point, we have to go ourselves. It will be risky. It will dangerous. It will be expensive (maybe we need to wait for a civilization that thinks more about the long term and less about the current bottom line). But we need to do it nonetheless. If for nothing else to protect our own dignity as a species. To qoute spock, "I said it was more efficient, but not preferable. Computers are useful tools but I have no wish to serve under one." Their is a difference between putting a probe on another planet and putting our footprint on another planet - and that difference is worth the extra money.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
I will admit that I lost interest when the author started dropping numbers I had recently seen in This article.
See that "Preview" button?
Actually, there isn't enough uranium to fuel nuclear power for more than two or three decades anyway. Afterall, to convert totally over to nuclear energy, we'd have to build 1000's of reactors in the US alone. That doesn't even consider the possibility of three mile island or chernobyl like accidents that will undoubtfully occur. The problem is this: oil may not come from fossil fuel but it is still finite. More importantly, cheap oil is finite. Cheap oil is any oil that you get more back from than you put into getting it. There is no substance on Earth that is as effecient in this regard as oil. Our countries and our way of life is based on oil. We are already seeing competition between ourselves and china over what is left. That will only increase. As this comeptition increases, we will look for alternatives but they do not now or ever will be effecient as oil. Een then, we begin to run out of them too. Cheap natural gas will begin to run out. Uranium will last a while but it will run out too. In the end we will end up fighting each other over the last resources on the face of the earth. Read 'The Redemption of Christopher Columbus' by Orson Scott Card. That is the future. An era of peace at the end after the great war but it will be too late. Maybe our distant ancestors will learn how to create solar panels out of the remaments of our fallen sky scrapers but their simply may no longer be enough resources left on Earth to continue to flourish. That is why we need to go to space. We need to get more resources. Simple as that. If we burn out all the fuel here and don't have another location to get resources, that's it.
We have probably already passed the point where we can say 'let's stay at home and solves earth's problems first'. The fact of the matter is we probably passed that point sometime in the 1960's at the latest. We have screwed Earth up so much that it simply can no longer be fixed wih just the resources of Earth. There is a possibility Earth can't be fixed no matter how much we work it. With the tiem we have left, we need to go into space now. We can't afford to wait. If we do, at best we get what card perdicted: a magical future enlightenment where everyone becoems environmentalist pacificists but at a point when it is simply too late. At worst, Earth is like the Titanic after it has already struck the iceberg. You can either stay on board and pretend that your foolish efforts trying to bail the ship out with buckets is going to solve the problem or you can jump ship. The bailing buckets may look like your solving the problem but the ship is already beyond hope.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
What do you tell the grand kids?
/. so that is redundant.
You may well live another 60-80 years;
when we are AAALLLLL still on this rock,
what do you tell the kids.
I'm sorry it cost too much to explore space,
we were afraid.. someone might get hurt..
Can we use wind power to get to the next star?
Our Greenpeace masters do not allow nuclear power
so our genes will never leave earth.
Greedy, cowardly, short sighted limp dicks!
Oh this is
Look at the evolutionary charts for computer capacity and human mental capacity - the lines corss some time in the next fifty years. In two hundred years humans as we know them may have to fight for their right to exist. In one thousand years they will either have given up or will be wiped out.
Actually it does.
The last thing I want is for us to send robots to space and use that technology to build robots here on earth. Uhh, dumb-ass, some people need tedious jobs so they can get a paycheck. And I don't want any possible space jobs to go to robots either! Maybe you want to give it away but I am sure there are plenty of people who want those resources. Not to mention that the whole point of sending people into space is because we want to travel there and colonize it! What a short-sighted individual. That's what we want and that's our money well-spent. The only way to figger that out is to send PEOPLE there. Sheesh, eggheads. No wonder we slap the shit out of those pocket-protector wearing geeks in bars.....
Hey, you think your house is cool?
Manned exploration may be expensive and hazardous, but every manned mission helps lay a small amount of groundwork for our eventual future of living and working in space. We need a "backup homeworld" to save our species from annihilation by natural or manmade disaster. Having colonies on Mars, the Moon, Lagrange points and beyond would serve the purpose very nicely.
I doubt Bush even expects to get a legacy out of it, he just wants to be the "Big Idea President" for the 2004 campaign. What better way than to propose an expensive, useless, NASA-run program that he knows will most likely be cancelled after he leaves office.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
I think we could eliminate most extraneous posts if we adopted a new /. motto...a quote by the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynahan:
/.'ers would love to see us go to MARS...but it just burns our asses that it was taken to this level by the Bush Administration. I hear ya...but it just ain't intellectually honest to let political ideology and partisanship color the discussion. I know politics is a large part of "space exploration"...but we can't start an honest evaluation of things this way.
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts."
As far as this topic is concerned, I think Keith Cowing of NASAWATCH & SpaceRef says it well in his "editor's note" about this op-ed piece.
(I would post it...but alas, it is copyrighted material - but you can still check it out on the main page of www.nasawatch.com )
Anyway, I love a high level of debate, but hope to have it with more accurate facts and critical thinking. I think most
Just my thought.
If you wait to have children until you have "enough" money, you're going to die childless.
:(
How different is this, on a "humanity" scale?
Aren't MOST of you sick at the short-sightedness of the institutions you deal with?:
Government (in the US, anyway) hardly every thinks beyond the next election, unless they are postulating huge costs or huge revenues for political purposes, then they'll make meaningless extrapolations like hell until the number is impressive enough.
Business hardly ever even looks beyond the next YEAR. Most business will happily cannibalize their future for some immediate revenues NOW, much less invest dollars that won't return during the tenure of the current CEO.
I may be a total Pollyanna, but Space Exploration has a (truly) mathematically INFINITE potential.
Granted, the return on investment may be on a term of decades or even centuries, but fer chrissake if even the technophiles are crying about running a balance sheet into the red for spaceflight, well then that bodes a pretty damn dismal future.
-Styopa
"Compare this with the $820 million cost of recently sending the robots Spirit and Opportunity to Mars, roughly one thousandth the cost of the President's initiative."
Yes, and those rovers have moved, what, a few hundred meters, crawling along (literally) at the speed of a snail? I mean, it took days for Spirit to *turn around and use the other ramp.*
Humans need to be sent because, for the forseeable future, we have immeasurably greater versatility than any robotic probe. A *child* could have either turned Spirit around in seconds, or drove over the parachute and unstuck it from the wheels if anything went wrong. The Apollo astronauts covered more distance in a combined few days on the moon's surface in their buggies than all the probes we've sent to mars can ever hope to.
The point is that, until robots are capable or driving themselves, they will need to be remote-controlled. And the only other body where you could drive a probe remotely at a meaningful speed is the Moon. Mars is taking robotic RC to the limit, crawling along at 16mm per second so that Mission Control can react in time to prevent the probes from crashing into something. Until robots are 100% autonomous and can think for themselves, they need humans there to provide that function for them.
Because space exploration is one of the few human endevours that can unite everyone.
My most vivid memory from childhoon is the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger. As a fourth grader, I had ditched English class and snuck into a a science class that was watching it live. On the other hand, one of my father's greatest memories is that of his entire small township gathered around the television in the local high school watching Neil Armstrong live on the surface of the moon. I wish I had the opportunity to partake in that feeling, instead of the tragedy which befell Challenger.
I think it is a noble goal to give this generation the same opportunity to experience the joy and pride America felt when Armstrong descended to the moon, and a manned mission to Mars is the means to do just that.
I'd like to add that Columbus did approach the Portugues crown for sponsorship, but they already had their own exploration arm that was moving along rather well. They knew about the size of the globe, and there was some documentation that seems to indicate that they passed on Columbus's mission in part because they knew he was wrong.
There is also some strong indication that when Pedro Alvres de Cabral decided to "get lost" in the South Atlantic only to "discover" Brazil, that they knew about the America's all along... they just wanted to keep it a trade secret from the Spanish.
The neat thing about the voyage of Columbus was that it finally blew off the covers of America for all of Europe, and no longer a state secret. That the Portugues knew even more, they "leaked" the discovery of the Phillipines to convince the Pope to move the demarcation line, giving the Portuguese more of South America.
Yeah, the history of exploration is rather interesting, and this is one case where two major world powers were completing against one another. Later on it was a battle between the French and the English, which in part was played off of one another by the American Colonists during the American Revolution.
Look at Project Apollo.
:)
Those astronauts found things on the moon that no robot ever built would have been able to find.
Just watch "From The Earth To The Moon" to see how much good science was done by the Apollo astronauts.
Heck, one of them can even lay claim to the most expensive game of golf in history
I was off by a factor of ten. The current estimates for Mars and the moon are somewhere near 1 trillion dollars. Your value of $400 million means the difference is 2500 times. We could send 2500 robots to the moon for the price of sending humans. Factor in that only 1/3 or so actually get there intact, and you still have 800 robot missions. Now that 1 trillion dollar figure was for 30 years worth of support, design, etc etc etc. Let's see, 30 years = 360 months. Gosh, we could send a robot every two weeks for the same amount as a few humans.
Those few humans won't have near the exploration capacity of a new rover every two weeks. There won't be any risk to life, no humans being stranded or losing suit pressure or having a rocket blow up or fail to ignite.
But humans have one advantage. Considering NASA's piss poor record of destroying working orbital observatories because they'd rather launch a new one than pay for the data collection of the working existing one, it's better to have a few humans sending back paltry amounts of data than so many rovers, you just know NASA would abandon each rover two weeks later when the next one landed rather than keep them all running and having to collect and store all that data.
Now let's conside the word "speculation" as you attempted to use it. Especially look at that wondrously speculative second paragraph of your own. No facts, no references, just pure b.s. speculation, far exceeding any of my own.
Two humans could have done everything the two current probes have done in the past two months in a few hours tops. -- Care to back that up?
they would produce tens of thousands of times the scientific data that machines would. -- Care to back that up?
Space tourism will need to follow government sponsored missions. -- You lost me there. Care to explain yourself?
This is a public works project that at this point can only be undertaken by a government entity. -- Is this shooting yourself in the foot? Public works project? Which, tourism or data collection? Is this some rationalization as to why either is necessary?
Once we get the proper hang of it, private industry will be able to take advantage. -- More govt knows best malarkey. Care to back it up?
Infuriate left and right
Why should you be angry about losing the hubble? Even if they did the repair work, risking personell and finance, the life of the Hubble lens would only be prolonged 2-3 years at most. There are plans to launch another orbital telescope in 2007, which will see further and sharper than Hubble.
The director of NASA's Mars unmanned probe project recently spoke at the National Museum of Australia, and his reasoning was that it was an unnecessary risk to staff to try and maintain or repair the Hubble, especially when newer telescopes were going to replace it soon.
Hubble has done its job, and has provided much useful data. Its mirrors have finite life however, and so it's time to move on. Lots of money has been spent on the launching, repairing and maintaining Hubble already, and telescope technology has improved in the meantime.
M.
You forget the breeder reactors. You can use plutonium as energy source in fission, and uranium around the active zone to deflect neutrons back and to convert some uranium to plutonium, which is then extracted in a reprocessing facility. This way you can recycle fuel over and over and over.
This buys more time for fusion research - the only kind of solar energy that is economically viable in large scale.
You still have the delays between sending commands to the robots and getting answers back. However, you can send a swarm of them, and then use the same ground team to handle them in round-robin fashion, which makes up for the delays (and provides a lot of redundancy in case of ...ummm... landing problems).
With some advances in the field of artificial intelligence, you can also send autonomous robots with built-in "curiosity", automatically finding the things that could be interesting, and exploring them. A swarm of a hundred of small automatic crawlers could provide a LOT of data, with being likely to have the same weight as the comparable ship for human crew and their life support system and radiation shielding.
Isn't it the reason why God gave us genetic engineering?
You've made such a persuasive point, that I've decided to fund the entire colonization of Mars myself. And I think I'd like to see us do it a lot sooner than 500 million years. I think we can do it in the next 10-100,000 years. I'm starting a trust endowed with my generously donated 2 cents. If I can manage a 1% rate of return, compounded for the next 10,000 years, it'll be worth about $327e39 in the year 12004 ($0.02*(1.01)^10e3)(that's 327 billion billion billion dollars per person, assuming 1 trillion people inhabit the earth in 12004). But that assumes a lofty 1% interest rate. If I can only get a more modest 0.1% rate of return, then humanity will have to wait ~100,000 years for the same amount of money. But this is still 5000 times sooner than expected!
"Here's a hot idea: a mission to colonize Earth! Take all the tons of money that Bush wants to pour into sounding something like a compassionate-conservative JFK ripoff, and invest it in providing enough food and clean drinking water for every human on earth. Heck, GW could even start with the US, and spend the money making sure nobody there starves of freezes to death. Homes for the homeless, food for the hungry, that sort of thing. Hey, maybe healthcare for everyone? Which would have a greater impact on our quality of life? Sending a few folks to "colonize" Mars, or assuring every person of a quality life here on Earth? BTW - Colonizing Mars with a few containers of junk and a few people? You are talking about a place that is not suitable for life, whereas we have one right here that COULD BE suitable for life... Just a thought." Again...
- God is pretend...
Once human lands on Mars, well, you can kiss goodbye the thought of not infesting the Martian biosphere with Earthness. One furtive pee and it is all over.
That's why colonists on Mars will have to drink their own pee.
By the way, one of the funniest things I ever read on SlashDot is your comment:
Think of it, ladies and gentlemens: tiny Martian bacteria in their microscopic metallic war-tripods stalking over the British landscape, crushing everything in their path...
-kgj
-kgj