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Van Allen Questions Human Spaceflight
An anonymous reader writes "James van Allen - the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belt - has called into question the motivations and expectations of space exploration and research, particularly manned space exploration. Van Allen comments that 'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'"
Van Allen comments that 'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'
Good enough for me.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Keeping all your eggs in one basket is a strategy for failure.
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
"Van Allen comments that 'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'""
Uh...so? The only motivation that got us off our asses and away from our idylic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on the plains of Africa was our desire to see what was over the next hill, what happens if we bash flints together, what happens if we lash a bunch of logs together and float it on the river...
I'd say adventure is a good enough reason to get me my damn spaceship and lunar weekend retreat!
-EvilMagnus
"To boldly go where where no man has gone before."
I think that is enough. This guy must not be a trekkie fan.
Take, for example, the struggle of Galileo against the church to permit society to recognize the fact that the world is round. Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it. It's a bit like hazing, and while people on both sides of the issue become almost fanatical in defense of their sacred cow the end result is good science.
There is a lot out there to be discovered, and only so much we can do with computers. It'd be nice if we could do it on the cheap, but clearly safety concerns intrude. Space is like the rainforest of the next era -- the sooner we investigate the faster we'll be able to refine its secrets into practical earthbound uses.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
He can end government spaceflight for all I care.
But, private spaceflight, that's none of his business. If he doesn't want a ride, nobody's forcing him to buy a ticket.
Van Allen's work involves fields and particles, not rocks or life. It's not at all surprising that he doesn't like manned missions; they are no good for his (narrow) field of science. But that doesn't mean that we should take him as anything other than a proponent of his own parochial interests; we should certainly not regard him as an authority on the worth of all expeditions into space.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
(1) Avoiding single points of failure for the entire human race (e.g., giant asteroid nails Earth);
(2) Profiting off the immense riches to be had in space, once the technology is advanced enough to gather those riches at a profit;
(3) The same reason people climb K2
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
We can't honestly keep on going like we are on this planet and survive much longer. We're using up resources faster than we can keep track of them and it's becoming easier and easier to make weapons of mass destruction... which terrorists will inevitably use against other nations/cultures. Especially as the population continues to skyrocket.
So, call me whatever you want, but Van Allen is just missing the big picture. We gotta get off this rock.
Or should we just wait for an asteroid cataclysm or some other natural disaster? I'd rather not. Personally, I think we should spend more money and effort on things like space elevators and fusion/antimatter/exotic matter propulsion.
In short, to Van Allen: screw you too buddy.
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
ideology of adventure he cites as the only reason for manned spaceflight is not an end unto itself - it is a way to maintain human interest and thus funding. It's pretty hard to get people interested in space when the only thing riding on it is a handful of integrated circuits. The average person couldn't care less about space travel or advancing science (Except perhaps in the medical arena) and in order to maintain any significant public interest whatsoever is is probably necessary to keep sending up manned missions.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure'
There is lot more money to be made from the taxpayer from pursuing human space flights. Robots are much cheaper and not nearly as lucrative to NASA.
...if you follow this assumption:
"Let us not obfuscate the issue with false analogies to Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, and Lewis and Clark, or with visions of establishing a pleasant tourist resort on the planet Mars," van Allen suggests
The space shuttle is PR. The ISS is a waste and a flop. The ISS should be a means not an end. Flags and footprints of COURSE aren't worth it if, again, they are an end and not a beginning.
However, those analogies to Columbus, Magellan, L&C and the tourist resort on Mars cease to be false if the goals are changed. If the point is to continue to grow out and off our ball of dirt, then none of the steps are a waste. If the goal is to put a flag on Mars and never return, then yes, it is a waste.
Moo.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Ummm...correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the thrill (or ideology in this case) of adventure what has driven mankind to grow beyond their boundaries? I mean, because of adventure, we headed west from our comfortable homes in England.
We destoryed the indians.
Then we headed west to the plains from our comfortable homes in the 13 colonies.
We, again, destroyed the indians.
And, of course, the lure of gold and adventure brought EVERYBODY to the Pacific coast.
By this time, the indians had become wise to us and had moved to Canada.
Okay, well, the thing with the indians could've been handled a whole lot differently. But, the whole "thrill of adventure" is what causes the human race to grow. He's saying space exploration just exists for adventure?
Exactly.
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
I'd just like to point out that "we have explored all of Earth" is definitely not true. The deep oceans are something that we are just barely starting to explore. There are some crazy looking motherfuckers living down there. They glow and shit. And they don't even need light to live -- how wack is that? Seriously, though, I understand your sentiment (and I agree with it) that space is the next big frontier. I just wanted to point out that there are still a few exciting opportunities still here on Earth.
GMD
watch this
Modern proponents of human spaceflight always seem to fall back on two arguments: (1) Get off the Earth so humanity won't go extinct when we blow up the Earth, and (2) exploration is an inherent human instinct.
(1) If we're so stupid we can destroy the only planet we live on, I don't see how we're doing the universe a favor by spreading.
(2) Satisfying an inherent human instinct shouldn't require a multi-hundred-billion-dollar budget. If you have an instinct to explore, check out your city sewer system, or look into the obscure corners of the Mandelbrot Set, or play an online game. All these activities satisfy the brute animal urge to get into new places.
In my experience, people who argue for human spaceflight on the grounds of "instinct" haven't examined their positions closely. They seem remarkably similar to religious ideologues.
Are missing the point entirely. Van Allen is questioning HUMAN spaceflight. He simply points out that most of our discoveries have been made by robots, and he's probably right. Space is much more suited for our metallic brethren than people, and is much cheaper as well.
He's not advocating that we stop space exploration entirely, as many of you seem to think.
This statement is not very bright and not at all visionary. Besides the likely scientific and possible economic benefits (and opinions of the potential for these vary, admittedly), there's one overarching reason of critical importance: Survival of our species.
With time, our ability to create a planet-wide catastrophe threatening our species survival grows exponentially. There are any number of ways we could do ourselves in ecologically or militarily, but the chances of those wiping out all of humanity are reduced when we're spread out among more than one planet - moreso if that planet is terraformed or otherwise made human-friendly on a large scale and self-sufficient without shipping of either raw materials or finished goods from earth.
Anyone who is interested, as Van Allen claims to be, in "the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life" should be unequivocally for, not against, manned human spaceflight with a final goal of extraterrestrial colonization.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
What he is saying that unmanned space flight has the same scientific value but costs infinitely less than manned space flight. If the sole reason we're doing manned flight is adventure, maybe our money would be better spend elsewhere.
Ask yourself this: Considering it will cost billions to send people to the moon versus the millions it cost sending unmanned flights, exactly what scientific experiment could those people do that an unmanned flight could not do? Look for evidence of life or water? Collect samples? Please enlighten me why we need to send a human there to do those things?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Space exploration is a dangerous business, and humans are too valuable to risk. Or at least they should be.
Computers and robots are terrific explorers. I believe that they can also be terrific builders of infrastructure. That's the direction that future space missions should follow.
I'm not saying that humans should stay home. I am saying that if I had to build a log cabin on the moon myself, or have a robot do it for me, I'd let the robot do it.
We need to reduce expenditures on manned spaceflight and redirect those resources to basic research in materials, computer systems, robotics, and planetary chemistry. Out of this research would come technologies allowing us to explore the solar system remotely, build robust spacecraft, and actually make a living off the materials available on the planet or moon we happen to be standing on.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
Computers are getting better but the human experience is where all advancement has been achieved. The current mission has taught somethings, but the next mission (if robotic) would need to be limited in scope (travel to 'x' drill hole, look for stuff), and missions repeated until objectives reached, whereas human interaction could alter actions outside limited parameters.
Although life is precious and reckless endangerment is to be decried, the fact is life is sometimes jeopardized/sacrificed for the greater advancement of the species (human or otherwise). Although not a good analogy, it is similar in sentiment to those unwilling to risk lives in battle.
Unwillingly to sacrifice one sacrifices all. THe 'all' in this case just happens to be knowledge and experience. If carefully balanced, some risk is acceptable (I'd do it).
Getting back to the topic, ID proponents are somewhat like James Van Allen; both assume that they already know all that is worthwhile or necessary, so there is no need to go further except for those things which particularly interest them (plasma physics or biblical exegesis, take your pick). Both are wrong.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
This article here draws an interesting comparison between ancient China and the current views toward space travel being held a good number of americans.
It would appear that the average person is content with their idiotic tv, fattening foods, gas guzzling road yachts, and other such pointless pursuits.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
Van Allen seems to be looking at this purely from the Cold War stance that he grew up in, i.e. only the government can send people to space, and it has no major motivation to continue. I agree with that much; what Van Allen's nearsighted view doesn't allow is the idea of private exploration.
He says, "I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable."
To the government and a nation, definitely not.
To a private investor? That's his choice to make.
So Van Allen is only half right. But he makes it seem like government spaceflight is by far the only option.
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
the only surviving motivation ... is the ideology of adventure
The "ideology of adventure"? As opposed to what?
Nice way to trivialize perhaps the only justification for our existence. Why are we here if not to travel and discover? The universe granted us enough awareness to perceive that there might be something worthwhile over the next hill. It seems to me we have a duty to adventure; it's our job!
That, or we could just hang back and breed. Should be fairly plain that one 8k mile dia. ball of rock is not sufficient for that to go on indefinitely.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Van Allen concludes: "I ask myself whether the huge national commitment of technical talent to human spaceflight and the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life are really justifiable."
Just replace human spaceflight with just about anything we do (war, anthropology, underwater exploration, antarctic research, ping-pong, water polo, chess) and it becomes that old easy argument of "it doesn't give me anything immediately, so why should we do it?"
Simply enough, humans want to be in control, and they don't want to be bored waiting around for some fictional utopia.
Not to pound too hard on the point, but if he expects UN-manned missions to be publicly funded by telling people "Hell, no, YOU can't go!" he doesn't live on the same planet as the rest of us. The ONLY reason for supporting robots is as a step toward replacing every Chesley Bonestell illustration I've got with a photograph, preferably taken by me.
Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it.
Are you trolling, or are you prepared to give some evidence and references for this "irreducibly complex" argument? I wouldn't call intelligent design 'new' or 'challenging'. It's the whole 'how did the eyeball originate' argument all over again. It hasn't managed to topple evolutionary theory before, I fail to see why it would this time.
In fact, I don't think 'intelligent design' deserves the designation of theory, either. It essentially states that things could not have evolved without an intelligent hand's intervention. Notice that could not is a negative. One can almost never prove a negative with certainty. That's one of the fundamentals of the scientific method and logical thought.
If you weren't there, personally, when the first flagellum was created by The Almighty, then you can't prove it did not arrive by other means (such as some kind of natural selection).
However, you can, by a metric tonne of evidence, painstakingly accumulated over years and years of scientific research, present a solid argument that it did possibly arrive via a series of modifications to existing structures (or even some happy accidents that benefitted the organism so much that it was passed on to offspring).
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
He's forgetting the huge symbolic value. We're humans. It's a human thing to like great symbols, monuments, achivements.
What if a Pharao of Egypt had said: "Screw this pyramid stuff, I'm spending the money on defense instead. And you can bury me in a wooden casket".
What if Charles Lindbergh had said: "What's the point? I can take the boat."
What if Columbus had said: "You can't sail to India. Everyone knows that."
It'd have been a much less interesting world to live in, I'll tell you that. I don't believe every single thing we chose to do should follow from the utilitarian principle of the "greatest good" in strict scientific or material terms.
Or to paraphrase Kennedy: We choose not to do these things because they are useful. We choose to do them becase they are a human thing to do.
...else what's a Heaven for?
Van Allen has apparently forgotten why he went into science in the first place. Discovery is a survival trait, and if we as a species don't remember that it won't take an asteroid to wipe us out.
What do we know about spaceflight? Its toxic to humans and there is nowhere anywhere nearby by any conceivable technology that we could get to. The reality is that one day something from Earth will reach another planet in another galaxy but it is going to look more like R2D2 than Captain Kirk.
And there is nothing wrong with this idea.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This is apart from the issue of distance. In the real universe, scale matters. You cannot compare travel to another galaxy to travelling across the Pacific.
When asked why/if we should be out in space, he said the following... just change it to answer the question we face now: should we (meaning people) go into space at all... the answer is the same...
.. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
"We have to stay here and there's a simple reason why. Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes
Our SURVIVAL is at stake. Forget the Sun going out, what about an comet impact? That's not an unprecedented event in Earth history, and we're due, statistically speaking. We HAVE to go, and it has to be sooner rather than later because that comet might hit us sooner rather than later.
Sorry Van Allen, your dead wrong on this one, and so is the human race if too many agree with you.
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
Mr. Van Allen,
Sorry, but I do not take pleasure in the adventure of pure science. I know its not very sophisticated of me, but if my money is spent on it, I'd at least like some of it to go to activities that keep alive the dream of actually being there someday.
To this point, I've been understanding of the extensive expenditures on your pure science missions though I think Hollywood could probably create better images that are just as real to me at much less cost. But, you are now attacking my adventures. So, apparently, the ground rules need to be defined.
If you want your adventure, give me mine.
Sincerely,
"apparently not as geeky as you"
The author is right in his reasoning to warn against false Columbus / Lewis and Clark analogies - it would be easy to look at space falsely as a vast frontier waiting to be conquered. We are eons away from finding routes to pleasant vistas in other galaxies.
The sad reality is space flight does have other ends, which have goals in common with the aforementioned explorers' missions. Commercial exploitation of raw materials, military industrialization, colonization in the name of territorial supremacy - these are the shared ends of these endeavors. The question is not what purpose can space purpose possibly serve, but do we have any true interest in these purposes?
M
Velcro...need I say more?
I am in quite a bit of agreement with this thesis. Knowledge is gained not only in the act of exploration, but also in the development of the tools we need to explore. Such exploration is dangerous and often unpleasant. Many of us are not up to the task. However, personal exploration is the one thing that defines us as people of action instead of wussies that would do anything, including cheating, to avoid action, and then lie about the fact that we instead chose to live our life in a drug induced stupor safely protected under our parents control.
This of course does not mean that everyone of us has to go out there and risk our life to discover novel information. Just that we should all realize it as a fundamental task done in exchange for the gifts we have all been given.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You might want to brush up on your history. One popular theory is that he got in trouble for advocating the heliocentric theory, but it's not even the only theory. It may be that he just pissed off too many powerful Jesuits. All educated Europeans in Galileo's time (and even long before Columbus' time) knew the world was round. The church's position was that "the Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go." Some historians even think he got in trouble for advocating atomism (the existence of atoms), which was perceived as contradicting the doctrine of transubstantiation.
In any case, it's hard to apply the Galileo analogy to modern times, because the scientific method wasn't even accepted in Galileo's time. There are plenty of examples of scientific discoveries since then that have overturned the apple cart against established opposition (Darwin being an excellent example), and they did it be providing empirical evidence, which the scientific method accepts as the ultimate arbiter of truth.
The fact is that Cassini and the Mars rovers are sending back exciting, unexpected data that we didn't have before. Reality is out there, and we discover it. It's not something scientists just make up.
Or perhaps the modern day battleground of evolution against the challenging new scientific theory of intelligent design, which suggests that certain biological features such as the flagellum are irreducibly complex and therefore could not possibly have been developed by increments as evolutionists would have it.
Intelligent design is not a theory. A scientific theory is supposed to make testable predictions, and ID doesn't. Here is a good book on the topic. Creationism isn't a coherent body of thought at all; it means whatever a particular creationist happens to think it means on a particular day of the week.
In it's own way, this is comparable to the battle against entrenched interests that new theories must undergo before they become the accepted norm.
Scientific theories are not the same as political opinions. And what's remarkable about the way human spaceflight is funded in the U.S. is that it has its own funding procedures that entirely bypass the normal process of peer review that you have to go through to fund scientific work. That's because it doesn't produce enough real science to jusitfy even a tiny percentage of the money it consumes.
Find free books.
Indeed they are, but considering they were The naval power of their time, and just threw it away on a whim is tragic. The same could very easily happen here, which would be equally tragic.
My patience is infinite, my time is not.
So say I was sailing to America from Europe and dropped you off in the North Atlantic 500+km offshore you'd be able to sustain yourself in the native ocean environment? Somehow I doubt it...even if you did survive the cold and could tread water to prevent drowning you would eventually need fresh water.
Its certainly faster with space and harder to protect yourself against it but we have come a long way technologically since we stuck a sail on a few planks of wood and set sail to conquer the oceans.
There seems to be a struggle within NASA between the engineers and the scientists. The engineers would contend that building the space station is an accomplishment far beyond that of the space telescope, and yet the space telescope has produced far more useful information than the space station ever will. Heck, even those little rovers that cost, what, 100M, have produced more science than the space station.
It seems odd to me, and probably other astronomers that people would spend 80 billion on an orbiting cottage, when so much more could be done with that money.
Why build a vehicle before you have a place to go? We don't even know if we will need snow tires yet?
If we had spent the 80 billion on better remote sensing gear then we might, by now, have found earth like planets around other stars. We might, by now, have discovered alien radio transmissions, we might, by now, have retrieved fossils of former life forms from Mars. Any of which would teach us far more than a space staion would.
Unfortunately, fed with a constant diet of bad sci-fi, most people are incable of imagining any possible method of exploration that doesn't involve laser cannons and leather clad chicks.
Most people, it seems, are not interested in real exploration. People don't want to discover something new, they want to find the same thing somewhere else. That's why all the Star Trek "aliens" breathe the same air, look human, and run their societies like the United States, hell there is more variation in the real societies on earth than one finds in the english speaking universe of Star Trek.
Real exploration involves going somewhere new, not going to somewhere you have been, using a different route. The thing about learning is that one learns the most through novel experiences, the more completely unknown the experience the more you learn. Given a budget you can send a robot a lot farther than a human. Even if the human will provide 1000x the science of the robot, the robot will still deliver more information, because it will be in an area that is a million times more novel than the human. The Saturn system is far more novel than than low earth orbit. It costs 80 billion to send a humans into orbit to study Earth for a couple years, it costs 1 billion to send a robot to Saturn. You tell me which one is doing real exploration.
What's really annoying about this guy is that he seems to think that un-manned spaceflight will somehow benefit if manned spaceflight is scaled back. Of course, that's nonsense. Cut manned spaceflight and I will bet you a donut to a Delta VH that within a decade NASA will cease to exist. This guy, who benefitted professionally to a huge extent from the existence of manned spaceflight programs, now has the nerve to turn around and bite the hand that (probably quite literally) fed him. That's annoying. And it hurts all of space science in the long run.
On a dollar-for-dollar basis space research of any kind (manned or unmanned) is pretty much a total waste of money. Some examples will help: the Hubble Space Telescope cost something like 2 billion. That's about 20 times the cost of the Keck Telescope, and it is about neck-and-neck when it comes to scientific output between the two. When it comes to planetary exploration - can you honestly say that there have been spin-offs that are useful here on Earth? I mean, let's be honest here: the science return from space research is all pretty trivial. Between us, who really gives a sh*t about some radiation belts around the Earth? A few power-line operators maybe, but it's not like they need a detailed understanding of the Earths bow-shock to operate, now is it? As for the rest of it - well, pretty pictures of Saturn are nice and all, but who really cares? They're ice and dirt, and have absolutely no impact on our daily lives. None whatsoever.
Some would argue that certain kinds of science can only be done from space, things like far-infrared, or X-ray observations. But those missions have in effect been subsidized to the tune of billions by other, less worthy missions. If you had to factor in the development cost of heavy-lift boosters into the cost of developing the Chandra X-ray observatory, it would have cost $20 billion or more. I doubt that would have been seen as worthwhile science.
In terms of improving human life, wouldn't the billions spent on un-manned space exploration be better spent curing disease through the NIH? Or a tax-cut. I mean, tax -cuts and de-regulation make more ultra-billionaires; if they want to fund space research privately then they can do that, and the free market will reward it accordingly (if in fact it is worthwhile).
Only a true naif would think that science is funded for scientific reasons alone, and Dr. van Allen has an inflated sense of his own importance when it comes to national funding priorities. Sciences like physics were funded because physiscists know how to make very, very large bombs. Bio-medical science is funded because people don't want to die. Everything else is pretty much not funded, or lives off of the table-droppings from the big sciences. And the big sciences are not funded because Congress has a love for deep knowledge.
By somehow pretending like his particular kind of science is more worthy than other science, he's starting a discussion that by all rights should hurt all of space science. In other words: Jim, SHUT UP. We've got a good gig going here, and you're messing it up.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
Related to adventure is challenge. Did van Allan perform all his research into radiation etc. because it was a way to pay the bills or because of the challenge of exploring unkowns? It would appear that his fire and imagination has gone out. Some people scratch that itch for challenge and adventure by crunching the numbers. Good for them. Others feel the need to get out there and discover new things up close and personal. Good for them to. Humanity involves humans. If we ever get to the point where we choose to only use robots to do things, humanity will then slowly and inexorably fossilize.
In order to travel long distances in space, we will need to develop systems to keep us alive indefinitely. This will also benefit us if, heaven forbid, some catastrophic event occurs to the earth that limits or removes its ability to sustain life.
Spinoffs of technology from this effort will help people in their everday lives in immeasurable ways (velcro, Tang, space blankets, and other exotic materials that save lives or allow us to do things previously impossible are a result of our manned space program).
Robots currently don't have the intelligence and flexibility to cope with changing environments quickly (look how long it took the mars rovers to cover the few miles during their explorations, that would have been a day trip for manned exploration).
There is no substitute, yet, for a human being on the ground. There is a whole level of real-time experiences that a robot can not take in or comment on - that humans are more than capable of doing. Aside from collecting specimens and taking pictures, robots will never have the immediacy that humans offer.
The idea of a completely automated space program, is similar to the idea of a completely remote controlled military aparatus. I think we can all agree that, except in rare circumstances where a robot would perform better (air combat beyond gforce limits of human pilots, and remote reconnaisance), war must be fought by humans, due to the ability to make the right decisions that AI is incompetent to make - and, more importantly, to not distance ourselves so much from the life and death on the battlefield as to make it easy for us to choose war as a first option. Human beings bring moral and esthetical issues into the mix, which robots, for all their precision, lack.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
.where the mars explorers are now, how much more could be accomplished in an exponentially shorter period of time by a person? Seriously. They don't often get stuck by a rock in front of their foot. They don't take 11 hours to descend a crater (with fingers crossed), they tend to solve their own problems, et cetera.
Until remotes become much more effective a human will remain the best options for on-site research.
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Yes, NASA is a government agency, and a government agency represents a political constituency. While scientists make up some of NASA's constituency, the vast majority are For Profit contractors and local communities where their employees are. Claiming that NASA only exists for scientific purposes is unbelievably naivete. (Especially as its role in Cold War Dicksize Fighting wasn't exactly a state secret.)
Somebody elighten me with a single reason manned space flight should have anything to do with me. Does it help our nation? Does it have anything to do with the roles of the government defined by our constitution? If so, please somebody tell me what that might be. Why all the blank stares now? Don't you assholes have a halfway legitimate reason for jacking up my taxes to put people in space?
However, for the romantics, a private sector space industry doesn't bother me one bit. More power to 'em. If enough people are crapping money and don't know what to do with it and would like to watch some guy on the moon on TV, fine with me. Go nuts guys, put your money where your mouth is. Just don't touch my piece of the pie. Hell, put it on Pay-Per-View to help offset the cost. If in a few years my boy is dying to see it, maybe I'll end up chipping in money to the cause so he can see it. If he'd rather have a bicycle, I'd like to be able to afford one.
As for those who want to buy the tickets, here's a news flash: Buy your own ticket. If you can't find a ticket, why don't you contribute to your cause. I'd like a roller-coaster theme park in my home town, but instead I've got Dutch Village. I'm not asking the city to raise taxes to fund a government-run theme park so I can afford roller-coaster rides even though half the people in the city can't ride them (or have no interest). I'm not complaining. It's not as if I'm working toward building a theme park here with my own time/money. Why is manned space flight any different? Let the people who want adventure pay for their own damn adventure, don't drag me into it.
And for the record, I'm in my mid 20's and well trained as an astronautical engineer, now working in technology. So don't cry to me about the jobs. Instead of taking home your tax money for a new car and spending my days producing nothing for you except brief periods of entertainment every once in a while, I work in a company that is productive for my nation and makes it a better place on daily basis instead of a cooler place where we strap rockets on people and send 'em real high.
The only thing more dangerous than a file named -rf is renaming it -rf\ /
Space Exploration has always been a much more longer term before we really see or understand what the Return On Investment was.
Space exploration provides a platform for us to tackle new problems, which result in new solutions. Even if we find nothing of value on mars for example, just getting to the point where we can be sure of that will have resulted in a wealth of knowledge.
I'd also like to add that we need more research being done for the exploration of our own planet. Exploring the deepest oceans is on the same difficulty level of space exploration.
You also won't get a variety of things that matter at the human level. What does the sand of Mars feel like bewteen the fingers? To walk on? What does the air feel and taste like? How does a human react to this environment?
You can write these off as irrelevant. If you're a soulless robot, you will. And that would be foolish, even at the purely logical level of a Vulcan. The feel of the sand between your fingers might be exactly the trigger to some insight that yields a new application, process or product that revolutionizes an industry.
(Frankly, whether it yields new products or not, I still want to feel it!)
Never discount the human presence or capabilities in these things.
Instead of a 2 year timeout while the Shuttle is being revamped, I think we need to take a 10 year timeout until new launch systems are invented.
Here are the technologies I would invest in:
Any of several forms of launch assist, most likely Magnetic Rail. Any other technology would benefit from having this as a virtual first stage. Find the ideal location and buy the land -- DO NOT LEASE. We could probably build it in America, but why be trapped long term with less than ideal initial launch orbits. To be really radical, make it accessible to all nations, maybe build it as a coalition of the gravity well escaping.
Scram Jet and VASMIR, lets throw bucket loads of money in those directions.
Ditch the Space Elevator (at least for now), concentrate on something that could really be built, and that would be a "rotovator"
For items like oxygen, water, propellant, food -- fire them into orbit with a cannon. Massive G-Forces will not hurt them (though it might over tenderize steaks if that's the kind of food your sending up). This is really-really cost effective. Iraq was constructing a cannon capable of hitting Israel, it's just a matter of scale
Put any two or three of these together, then manned space flight begins to make sense
Letter To Iran
The worst thing about this article is, he's starting with valid data and then drawing the wrong conclusions from it.
He's pointing out the failure of our human space flight since Apollo, or perhaps since Skylab. All the budget-busting cost overruns, all the delays, and the relatively crippled capacity of the International Space Station -- yes, I'm familiar with all of that. Dr. Allen says that the paltry results we've gotten from manned space flight for the last 30 years don't come anywhere near justifying the resources we've expended on it, and he's right. Manned spaceflight for the last 30 years can be summed up as a costly failure.
The catch is, he concludes that manned space is a bad idea. Any more reasonable or unbiased observer would look at the same span of history and conclude that we've been doing manned space flight stupidly for the last 30 years.
I personally think about 70% of the failure stems from the decision to scrap the Saturn rockets and replace them with the Shuttle. The other 30% can be laid down to NASA's ever-shrinking budget and general bureaucratic ossification.
Moving a serious human presence into space isn't going to make sense until we have an economical, high-capacity, transportation and freight link between here and there. We could have constructed that link in the 1970s if we'd gotten serious about it, and we could do it more easily today. But instead our leadership (both inside and outside of NASA) keep dithering around without any focus.
Let me rebut. First of all, the only reason that space travel seems adventurous is because it is still new, dangerous, expensive, and controversial. All of those aspects need to be removed from the equation of space travel before it can be a productive endeavor. We have to keep working at it, improving it, productionizing it, until space travel becomes old, safe, cheap, and boring. THen we won't have any old-school scientists (taken your metamucil today, Roger?) spewing drivel like this.
Second, any "scientist" who states that manned space travel is a waste is simple envious of the "whopping" budget for manned space flights. True, the space program is expensive compared to say, dinner at Burger Barn. But compared to the 2003 GDP of $10.7 Trillion, the entire NASA budget for 2003 was $15.0 Billion, or only 0.14% of our nation's productivity. Or as a percentage of the $2.128 Trillion 2003 federal budget, only 0.71%. (Holy crap, I had no idea that the feds took 20% of the GDP!) Or finally, as a percentage of the interest we paid on the national debt last year of $181 Billion, only 8.3%. Of Social Security's $472 Billion, 3.2%; of National defense's $368 Billion, 4.1%; of Medicare/Medicaid's $390 Billion, 3.8%; of other 'discretionary' spending's $390 Billion, also 3.8%. Compared to the major federal spending programs, NASA is small potatoes indeed.
There will always be space exploration, but what we need now is to start harvesting the resources available in space. Space travel will become a national priority when it becomes a net positive on the balance sheet. Or in other words, when the expenses are clearly outweighed by the benefits, by the resources made available, and by the money to be made, in outer space.
Argh! I hate it when "distinguished elder scientists" come up with this kind of crap. Do they just enjoy shooting themselves, and their colleagues, in the foot? Sheesh.
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Human space exploration with current technology is just way too expensive, dangerous, and time consuming.
We can send dozens of sophisticated robots out into the solar system for the cost of sending one manned mission back to the moon.
We can send robots to the most distant reaches of the solar system. The furthest we can reasonably expect to send a manned mission with today's tech is Mars.
I would rather, in my lifetime, see photos from the depths of the Europan Oceans, from the surface of Pluto, from the surface of Titan. I would rather, in my lifetime, see robotic archeological digs done on the surface of these worlds. All the while we would be learning how to work in space without the cost and danger.
I would rather see these things, than have one half-assed attempt to get some people onto the surface of Mars, made by some government to prove it's technological prowess over all of the rest of the nations of the world.
We'll know when it's time to send men when the cost is within an order of magnitude of sending a robot.
I think what we should do instead of blowing all this money on manned space flight is to plow money into basic physics research. I'm not talking about String Theory or Cosmology. I'm talking about good ol' fashioned experimental science. Whether it be quantum teleportation, collapsing bubble fusion, materials science, or anyone of a number of cutting edge research areas that increase our understanding of and ability to manipulate the physical world. This is where the real advances are going to come from that are going to allow for human space exploration. We are still using chemical rockets for space travel which we've known about since the 30s!!
Far too much money goes into these partical accelerators and underground partical detectors that help scientists prove cosomological theories about the universe and about places that we won't get to in a million years and about energies that are far beyond our ability to manipulate. Let's focus the money on the practical science.
Ahh exploration. Perhaps the problem is that it's being done incorrectly? Or that there is still a space race, when everyone should just pool their money. I don't know, but let's not stop. There's still too much that we don't know, and whether or not space will be the best classroom, let's not rule it out as a possibility.
Van Allen makes a couple good points. The International Space Station has an unacceptably high cost/benefit ratio, and probably won't produce any significant science. The significant science (so far) has come from automated probes. Analogies between space travel and past explorations on earth may also be weak, but that is because space travel is an entirely different sort of undertaking. Beyond learning anything or exploring new territory, space travel is a conscious evolutionary step.
With all due respect to this legendary scientist, suggesting that human space flight may be obsolete is like the Patent Office suggesting in the 1800s, according to myth, that there was nothing left to invent. There may be no tangible material benefits to space travel in the foreseeable future, ignoring Teflon and the standard list of by-products. The most important benefit will be the long-term survival of the human race. We know that our planet is subject periodically to catastrophic events that can extinguish us. Populating at least one more world will be as significant as climbing out of the primordial ooze.
Incidentally, grounding the remaining space shuttle fleet "to take steps to improve their safety" doesn't conflict with starting "a more costly and far more hazardous" Moon/Mars program. Astronauts, and I think most people in general, are fully aware that no spaceship is "safe" in any normal sense. Safety in the space program is more of a euphemism for "avoiding setbacks."
Aparently it is hard for some people to understand that it is worth the trip even if you don't expect to have a nice native population to exploit uppon your arrival.
... valuable realestate for providing the open space we will need for our ever-expanding population
... valuable realestate which provides means to study the universe (physics etc) without the bothersome atmosphere.
... valuable realestate to occupy, if we do it _BEFOREAHND_ if the earth takes a hard punch at fractional-C (or solar orbital velocity) from a "massive" body. [If we wait for the punch, it will be too late to scramble into space.]
... will fund research in Environmental Sciences.
... will fund research in Physics.
... will fund research in Materials and Manufacturing. ...
... will fund research in topic(N+1).
The "but there is nothing there (to live on)" argument falls apart thusly:
1) There is something there. It isn't a lush tropical expanse of airable land. It is, however, "valuable realestate" for providing the raw materials we will need once we use up this planet.
2) There is
3) There is
4) There is
5) The actual pursuit will fund research and development in Medicine.
6)
7)
8)
N+1)
This debate puts me in mind of some song from the seventies (cant remember the title) that had a line like: "spent a billion dollars to go to the moon. Brought back a bag of rocks... Must be nice rocks..."
In this case, the trip itself is incredibly valuable to us here in terms of our own life and well-being.
In this case, the understanding of habitat necessary to create *artifical* habitat could revolutionize our own habatat here on earth (notice the repeating word) and coudl lead to ways to sustain and repair the one we are shitting all over down here.
The argument against seems to be "if there are no native inhabitants there to exploit, and the streets of the cities of those primitives are not lined with gold, we might as well forget it."
After all, you seem to say, if its work and the payoff isn't obvious in banannas and slaves to pick them, we might as well stay home.
(Yes, that last is a troll-like and unfair generalization of your position; but if you get to generalize away all the benefits of the pursuit because the travelers will not easily survive shipwreck; then I get to generalize *in* what you might demand of the trip in order to have the trip seem worthwile. 8-)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
This is where the background of Slashdot's readers becomes clear: somehow IT people seem to find space travel very exotic and compare it to Columbus and Magellan, I mean, what's with that? As a physicist, I have to say that Van Allen is right on: manned space travel is way too expensive, and the real returns are questionable. Life, if that's what we're looking for, is far away, and radio-telescopy is the way to go. And, while we're at it: I know people who have sent experiments up with the Space Shuttle: again, I find this to be highly suspect: you lose gravity, and that's it: big deal.