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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.'"
Space exploration is so expensive right now. Any large scale things cost way too much with current technology and building methods for how much they bring in to the community. Although commercial projects to make cheaper space devices seem to be making it big as of late. I'd love to see space exploration exlode(not physically, cause ouch) and be a plossible commercial oppertunity.
I'd think that manufacturing and power plants would be great on the moon as to reduce pollution and accidents close to home. Maybe when the technology gets cheaper though. Still a ways off I'd say.
Boxing Equipment Reviews
"No. We have to stay here [Babylon 5] 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 .. and all of this .. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars." (Infection, season 1, ep. 4)
Sappy, yeah. But it makes the point nicely.
(quote copied from http://jdmoncada.tripod.com/babylon5.html)
2) Would you rather we satisfy our brute animal urge to kill things with multi-TRILLION dollar budgets, or our animal urge to explore with multi-billion dollar budgets?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Such as...?
. . . and doing rather well, all things considered.
Patience.
What about bringing humanity together for great accomplishments?
What about colonizing the solar system?
What about exploring the universe?
What about inspiring future generations?
What about showing democracy is superior to communism...
Remember that market value is tied to both the supply and the demand, a planet of platinum is quite likely going to cause the market to fall out because platinum isn't used in enough quantity to maintain the current value if a planet of it was found
However, it is quite likely that if something is found that's going to make people rich its either a) going to be something that is extremely rare here on Earth and quite useful for construction or b) a new way of making energy and the fuel can only be found in quantity somewhere other than on Earth.
> 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.'
Hmm.. How about.. colonization? Or should we just stay here on Earth till we think we're ready to colonize, maybe in a few hundred years, and then just go colonize w/o ever having been there? I think that is short-sighted - sounds to me like he's suddenly interested in the politics and economics of it rather than the science.
BTB, I love the FP: "[the ideology of adventure] - good enough for me."
Must-not-watch TV!
SpaceShipOne is not driven by seeking of a return in investment - SpaceShipOne will never deliver a return of investment, primarily because it's useless as anything but a joy ride. SpaceShipOne is driven by the same thing as political reasons: pride. Pride at winning the X-prize, pride for Scaled Composites and Rutan, etc.
I seriously doubt that Paul Allen put money into the craft for some sort of theoretical return from joy ride sales. He did it because he wants to have a craft that goes down in the annals of history. Rutan undoubtedly has the same motive, plus a more personal motive of promoting his company.
Even if they can get into *ORBIT* (not "space", which is trivial by comparison), there's only a limited satellite market. They have to get prices down to 1-3k$/kg (the exact point is debated) before a host of new space opportunities start to open up.
And SpaceShipOne's design will *never* get to orbit, on many different fronts. Any orbit-reaching craft will involve starting over from scratch for almost all parts.
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
If NASA is said to have a profit it is definitely not money, there profit if anything would be considered scientific advancement. In which case it can be shown that in fact Robots are MORE "lucrative" than manned spaceflight as robotic missions have resulted in much more scientific gain throughout the years. The solution would be to trumpet manned spaceflight and do new and interesting things with it in order to increase their budget via increased interest and popularity. While actually spending this increased budget on robots and more useful scientific research.
Lucrative: producing a good profit
Over the short term, putting talking meatbags into space and keeping them alive is cripplingly expensive. So it makes sense to put up robots / computers / etc.
But once you get around the problems in keeping that talking meatbag alive, you will find that the talking meatbag can try a whole lot more and do a whole lot more then the robot.
So which is easier long term? Solving all the known issue problems in keeping a talking meatbag functioning in space, or creating a device that can improvise and use tools, is capable of learning and higher reasoning, and can interpret situational input and act on it in real time?
END COMMUNICATION
Of course scale matters. You can't really compare travel into orbit with travel to another planet; you certainly can't compare travel to another planet with travel to another star; and you can't compare anything at all within reason to travel to another galaxy.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
because of the trees...
Van Allen comments that "the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure."
Is there any other reason for science, any science, to exist? We as a species survived for thousands of years without it. Most species on Earth today have absolutely no concept of science and still manange to thrive.
Science exists soley because we as a species are curious, very curious. As my high school science teacher, all those years ago explained it, "If science didn't exists, we, as a species, would invent it". As a species, we need it to keep us and our intelligent brains challenged. The specifics of the science really don't matter, it is the pursuit of knowledge that is important.
So science has added a few years to my lifespan, cured some deseases and has in general raised my quality of life above that of my ancestors, but as far as the human species is concerned, nothing has really changed. We still survive pretty much the way our Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great,... Grandfather did all those years ago. We spend most of our time hunting for food, shelter and an opportunity to mate.
One man, one vote. To send people into space is the grandparent's vote, and mine echos it. The bulk of your argument seems to deal with the way space is explored under government support, not with the fact that it is supported that way. I agree that there is a lot of waste, way too much waste, in the way NASA does things. But I still think that space exploration needs to be funded on several fronts, including the public front.
Look at biotech as an example. We explore biochemistry to find new ways of doing things. The benefit to mankind is exceptional and obvious. What is better: NIH funding of open projects that are available to all (Human Genome Project) or research done by private companies that are closed or fee based (the Celera genome database)? Biotech is full of similar examples. Would be better or worse off if the cutting edge drugs were discovered and approved in university labs solely funded by NIH, and were open to the public for use (yeah, yeah, a pipe dream for various reasons)?
Perhaps space exploration would be better served if it were under the direction of a body more like the NIH than NASA.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
This is just plain ignorance. Columbus didn't even set sail expecting to find a "New World" he just wanted to get to China. Contrast that with space exploration and we don't want to find any new worlds we just want to go to Mars. Who knows what we might find on the way. Cure for Cancer? Intelligent Life? New minerals? How can you say that "adventure" is the only reason to go. It is also funny that all of the people mentioned failed in their quests.
Still all of them are famous as making history and advancing civilization. Shouldn't that tell us something about doing something because its an adventure and never been done. That is the only way we discover.
Not to mention that it puts lots of money into the economy. Think how many engineers the x-prize gives jobs to. Wait until we actually privately put a man into orbit. Then we'll see lots of jobs in the "private" space sector. Lots of high paying ones at that.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
But surely robot space probes fail this test even more spectacularly than ISS. Van Allen's only motivation is pure science--knowing for the sake of knowing. But only he and a few of his ivory tower friends share that motivation.
As for me, I would like to see a reduction in both manned and unmanned spaceflight. Given the imminent Hubbert Peak, manned space flight should be delayed until we have the technology to build self-sustaining colonies, and unmanned space flight should be limited to that which has material benefits for those of us on Earth. Adventure and Knowledge are wonderful, but our highest priority should be to make sure that there are still people alive in the future to enjoy all this adventure and science.
Because it's there...
Our planet is an insignificant dot when compared to the rest of the solar system. We should at least try to explore our own solar system. Robots have been used to explore the moon, other planets, asteroids and even comets. This should continue.
Because we're here...
What else should we be doing? Consume more of our non-renewable sources, watch the latest blockbuster, play video games and amuse ourselves? There are things that can be done here to improve our collective lot in life but that shouldn't stop some of us from having dreams and goals of someday having our progeny live in space (or Mars or wherever).
Because there's stuff up there...
If we just captured 1% of the materials in the asteroid belt there would be enough gold, silver, iron, water, etc that we would never have to launch raw materials in space again. The first one to grab an asteroid and return it to Earth will be remembered longer than Magellen.
Because it can make $$$...
It might throw some of the commodity markets into short term panic but eventually those markets would correct and everyone would eventually benefit.
Because we are mortal...
Setting up shop off this island Earth is our only long term guaranty of survival.
Because God said so...
Told me in a dream that this was our future, if we are to have a future.
Because God said not to...
According to some, God only gave us this planet. Well, let's just see about that.
Because James van Allen said not to...
Screw him, who the hell does he think he is? Just because he got his name attached to a radiation belt he thinks he knows what's what? When someone says something isn't possible or that something shouldn't be done, it just makes it more possible that it will be done.
Besides, if we don't get into space, we'll never meet the Vulcans and there will never be a federation. The thought of that is too horrible to imagine.
Rain.
Space travel is easy until you try and implement it. In my spare time, I've been working on a rocket simulator. Even considering "parts" as pretty large elements (for example, I have "engines" (comprising the nozzle, combustion chambers, any linings, any gimballing pivots (but not actuators), any ignition sources and flame holders, etc, but not any turbopumps or compressors, or actuators for gimballing) as a single "part"), the craft is already up to about 2,000 parts. Every time you add something, it seems, you need to add 5 more parts, which each need their own parts...
For an example, lets say you're doing a reusable landing vehicle, and want to add a single aileron. Ignoring the fact that machining this aileron will be an incredible pain (needs to be both light and strong at high temperatures, and not leave any gaps when the craft is reentering the atmosphere (which would act like a blowtorch)), you need power for it. Ok, so you put in a couple hydraulic actuators. Ok, now these hydraulic actuators need flow control valves and valves to limit the flow, and you need oil lines, a hydraulic pump (and backup), an oil pump (and backup), and a power system for the pumps, along with breakers, which should probably have sensors on them and control lines to flip them should they toggle unecessarily. We'll assume you've already got a power system as a whole installed. Ok, you're set now, right? Nope. It can easily get too cold in space for both the hydraulic system and the oil lines, so you need heaters on the tanks, along with temperature sensors; likewise, on the lines themselves (either that or you need constant circulation), and on the actuators themselves. Of course, the actuators need position sensors so the computer will know if something jammed. Each of the heaters needs power and breakers similar to those described above. Each of the breakers, pumps, valves, and heaters needs computer control, which has to be carefully tested for failure conditions. Now, additional hydraulics don't need too many additional resevoirs (and their associated heaters and pumps), but the lines and actuators still need the heaters, pumps, breakers, and controls. Note that I'm not even getting into what you need to mount and insulate (thermally and electrically) all of these components and to hinge moving components properly.
This is just for an aileron. Need I get into the cabin?
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
Most of the wetware reading this is getting older. Eventually the joints begin to wear out. Wouldn't it be nice to have an option to retire to a microgravity enviroment?
Let us not obfuscate the issue with false analogies to Christopher Columbus...
Van Allen is wrong here. The analogy to Christopher Columbus is spot-on in one very important way:
Space travel, like the "Age of Exploration", is a matter of wealthy white men helping themselves to an unreasonable portion of the Earth's resources, without concern for the harm they do to the rest of the human race.
The billions of dollars spent on space didn't spring into being from nothing. This is wealth that the "first world" has and the "third world" doesn't have. Why the disparity? Is the first world "naturally" wealthier? Were all those white people born smarter or more productive? No, absolutely not. All men are created equal. Inequality is, by definition, always an unnatural and artificially imposed condition.
When Nike spends US$0.50 making a US$80.00 pair of sneakers in a third-world country, that's US$79.50 in wealth transferred from the third world to the first world. That is the template for the world economy these days. You can call it "colonialism", or you can call it the "world economy", or you can call it anything you like, but the bottom line is that somebody's paying those folks in the third world a hell of a lot less than their labor is worth, and they're powerless to do anything about it.
Even leaving aside the staggering and unprecedented environmental damage done by the rockets themselves, the human damage of colonialism far outweighs whatever microscopic worth the entire enterprise may have. And without colonialism, there would be no space programs at all. Only colonialism can produce such massive concentrations of wealth in such a tiny set of hands.
The International Space Station is no less an assault on racial and social justice than the conquest of the Americas was.
I understand the fine poetry of exploration, but the reality is a brutal nightmare, and it's the reality that we have to live with here on Earth.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
spacecraft have more "parts" than a sailing ship. But adding in a new sail still requires multiple "parts" - as a minimum, the sail itself, the yard, lines at the end of the yard, lines at the lower corner of the sails, various block & tackle for those lines, extra places to tie off those lines (I forget what they are called. Anyone?)
In other words, complicated "ships" are nothing new. Look on the bright side - a spaceship to Mars is unlikely to have to worry about plague-bearing rats eating all the moldy/rotten rations. Nor will potable water be much of an issue. Yah, we'll have to worry about breathable air and power, but submarines have been dealing with similar (definitely not identical) issues for around 100 years.
It's an engineering problem, and nowhere near an insurmountable one.
It's also a political problem. THAT may be the insurmountable part.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It is depressing to think that one of our species' greatest accomplishments (apollo 11) was largely catalyzed not by curiosity or noble sentiment, but rather by the age-old motivation of competition and nationalism.
It doesn't have to be this way of course. If the Earth was in fact flat, people would I believe be rather insulted by this brazen limitation to their lateral inclinations. It would be very difficult to not think about space, if it ultimately/obviously curtailed all of our primary vectors of motion. Unfortunately, like caged hamsters we are fooled easily by the affected infinity of looping- around.
Perhaps if large scale space-tourism ramps up, then people will become more cognizant of the limit that lurks above. Hopefully this will insult us so much that we push off to save our dear collective ego.
If not this, then maybe China will get on the ball and threaten to colonize the Moon, Mars, Europa...ad astra.
Wait a minute. Are you trying to compare rope and cloth to linear hydraulic actuators and pumps exposed to 3-4 Gs and heavy vibration?
;).
If you want to talk about disease, we can go into the difficulties of making a hygenic zero-G toilet and waste disposal system.... you know, as opposed to just going over the edge of the ship. And potable water, *especially* on long trips (which involves recycling) is *one heck* of a lot harder than barrels filled with rain water.
Submarines, while extreme engineering, aren't as extreme of engineering as rockets - mainly because you can build them much bigger and far heavier for the same cost (which makes things a *lot* simpler), and they aren't exposed to nearly such intense G forces and vibrational loads (the combination of these things with light components at high temperature is particularly nasty).
There was an attempt to build a rocket like a ship once - it was called SEALAR. There's a reason why it failed
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
Van Allen apparently struggles with the concept of "Don't put all your eggs in one basket."
Any number of catastrophes could occur which would wipe out life on this planet (or at least the human variant of it), from the uncontrollable (asteroid hits, neighborhood novae, solar instability, etc.) to the self-induced (disease, ecological, nuclear...)
Only one way to ensure humans survive - get off the planet and spread out. Only way to do that - human space travel.
Now, if Van Allen's argument is that the human race isn't worth saving, then let's have that argument. But to say the only reason for human space travel is "adventure" shows a critical lack of imagination.
Frankly, if you have to "sound like Spock" to make your case, the argument has already been lost on those who didn't waste their youth consuming Sci-Fi. And that does seem to be the main argument here: "We should do it because Gene Roddenbury said it would be a Great Leap Forward."
Kennedy had his own set of political goals, and an enormous amount of resources during an unprecidented peak of national power and wealth and progressive taxation. He could justify doing something hard, and was making a political case on the merits, not fantasy.
Yeah, a rocket engine is complex but you are trying to make it seem like it is harder than any other numerous engineering challenges that have already been surmounted by human kind with trial, error, many times loss of life, but most of all with time until we have finally reached the day when the feat to be accomplished is routine.
I think you vastly underestimate the challenge needed to build a tower hundreds of feet tall that will not topple in the first storm or park a submersible on the bottom of challenger deep, under 11 miles (17700 m) of water at a pressure exceeding 16000 pounds per square inch (1125 kg/cm^2).
To you they are trivial because they have already been bested by engineering. Space is the new challenge and it will still prove to be a hard master for many years to come but we will eventually, given the willingness to challenge it, advance in engineering powers to the point where it too is a routine endeavor.
On thing that I find odd, is that in the context of space exploration loss, and the resulting death is viewed as such a horrible risk that the attempt should not be made. Of course I do not want to see people lose their lives... but I would risk mine to try if I was given the opportunity. Yet still, compare this reaction to the loss in the context of other human endeavors... If we made a roll of all those lost at sea in the name of exploration it would read on for pages, no for volumns upon volumns. Heck it was not that long ago when the building of a skyscraper was considered well managed if fewer than 15 workers died during its construction, but in the exploration of space, any risks seems to great to those of us that would rather we just stay here, at home.
Yes we should acknowledge the danger and we should not take undue risk... but we should not let the fear of loss paralyze us into inaction.
Have you thought for yourself today?
I'd say adventure is a good enough reason
True, but it's not the only reason. Among the others are:
* Moving humans off of earth. Building stable colonies away from earth is key to sustaining humanity (global catastrophies do happen), and making them self-sustaining will take generations upon generations, so starting now makes sense.
* Mining ore from asteroids is something that can mostly be automated, but having a human being present solves for a lot of sticky problems.
* Building a stable Lagrange point station would make manned and unmanned exploration of the solar system much easier.
* The first nation to develop a strong and stable, manned presence in space will have a substantial tactical advantage over the rest of the globe.
Submarines are far more extreme than a rocket.
G forces are one thing. But the shuttle only has to deal with a pressure differential of 1 atmosphere. The current generation of nuclear powered submarines has to deal with pressures at least 60 times greater. Plus the corrosive action of saltwater. Vibration is an issue as well. The SSTG (ship's service turbo-generators) spin at well over 20,000 RPM, with a finely machined series of reduction gears dropping it to about 100 RPM.
Not only do you have to navigate a submarine in the environment, you have to fight there, too. Over-engineering and backups upon backups, plus the ability to perform most repairs at sea...
Sure, the golly-gee, whiz-bang, push button factor is higher on the shuttle. But for just sheer competence and excellence of engineering, the nuclear submarine is a far more complex machine than the space shuttle
I'm not crazy,I'm actively irresponsible.
Spacecraft have to deal with a pressure differential of 1 atm on *thin, lightweight aluminum* that has just been subjected to extreme G, temperature, and vibrational loads right at the edge of theoretical viability. I mean, for God's sake, submarines can be built out of *Thick STEEL*. Do you know how much most rocket designers would love to have the level of tolerance that would allow them to build out of *STEEL*?
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
The universe does not need Marilyn Monroe or Shakespeare or Einstein to be known.
Neither do we, in the present.
Yet, would you consider it unfortunate if, somehow, all traces of Bach's music vanished tomorrow? If we woke up to find every last copy of "Army of Darkness" eaten by moths? If some anti-intellectual government managed to efface The Tempest (Shakespeare's or Gaiman's version, doesn't matter which you prefer) from human memory?
We don't "need" culture. But at least some things seem worth keeping around.
Do not presume that humans as they exist now represent the highest form of evolution. Anthro-centrism is another fallacy of scifi.
The highest form? I most certainly hope not!
However, aside from our little problem with (metaphorically and sometimes literally) defoecating in our own living area, we represent the highest evolution has to offer, so far, that we know of.
Perhaps more advanced life exists out there somewhere. Perhaps not. But why risk losing what progress the universe has made with us so far? All dependant on a stray asteroid, or the sun becoming unstable (do you track the solar weather? For a minima in the 11-year solar cycle, we've had a scary number of very very large CMEs lately, fortunately none of the X30+ ones came straight at us), or any of a number of other essentially unpredictable and unavoidable events that could very well wipe out all higher life on Earth.
Do I expect such an event in my lifetime? No. But then, neither did the dinosaurs. At the very least, by investing in ways to survive off-planet now, we can give our descendants some hope of avoiding the eventual destruction of the planet. In reverse-dog-years, our sun has passed 50 and won't stick around forever.
The survival of the single-celled organism was once at stake too, and instead of it being an issue of "does the single celled culture survive or not?", there was a third option - a higher form of life.
True. But if all the single-celled organisms had vanished due to a nearby GRB, that higher form of life (ie, us) would never have existed. And to the best of our knowledge as a species, life may simply not exist anywhere else in the universe to "carry the torch" should we suddenly vanish.
Yeah, but along with Lao Tzu we'd be saving the memory of George W Bush. Why not just let nature take its course and allow some other form of intelligent life take our place in the stars.
We can't even come to an agreement over simple issues like gay marriage, abortion, evolution, basic medical care and the costs associated with it. Why complicate alien thought, if it exists, with our pointless dilemas? I suggest we live free and then die, peacefully, naturally.
Haven't read the full article/interview but in my opinion space travel is restricted to those with the money and power to make it happen, thus governments or big business. My opinion has always been that we will travel in space once me have used up or over populated this planet and need another place to settle, think of the first Matrix and the idea that humans are parasites and that we just consume and consume until there is nothing left and will move on to the next thing without a thought. The little guy who has dreams of greater things and of adventure will never ever be able to drive space exploration. Hell even the early explorers had to ask the king or queen for the backing.
7/8" steel. You have no clue how much of a luxury that is.
The space shuttle barely gets by on 0.144 inches of aluminum at most parts - aluminum that has to operate at about a third the normal strength it would on the ground at times of maximal stress (reentry) because of heat - after being subjected to many extreme heating and cooling cycles and high Gs and vibrational loads. And that's for a craft with a landing mass of 104 metric tons (and lets not even get into the wet mass....)
SILENCE BLATHERING TOADIES! We are your new masters.
My feeling is that we have a duty to our children to explore space and setup colonies on the moon and mars (at a minimum)
Why? Because we need a disaster recovery plan. We need a way to ensure that if a meteor the size of Texas slams into this blue marble tomorrow that we as a species will survive.
In that same realm, every colony would have a complete and constiently updated "library of knowledge".
This way, if Earth was destroyed tomorrow, a student at MU (Mars University) could go into the library and read a copy of the constitution or watch a video of the launch of the first Chinese manned space flight.
Equally, a phyisician living on Mars could look up treatments for some rare form of cancer and also be able to reference clinical trials of drugs, how they were administered and how to synthesize said drugs. If this phyisician comes up with a better treatment this info would be spread back to Earths database and the moons.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
So we should just give up? Nuke the planet and be over with it?
We have over 6 billion people on the planet. Soon enough this number might just double. If you think getting to Mars is difficult, then try to solve the problem of 12 billion people flushing the toilet at the same time! (ie. each day a city the size of New York covered in shit). And no, you can't just dump it in the ocean and hope for the best, as we seem to be doing now.
If you cannot solve a simple problem to try to somehow live on Mars within the next few decades, then I am not very confident that we will survive on *this* planet.
PS. The argument that it costs a fortune is crap. A country like US spends over $400 billion per year on more "creative" ways to kill and spead uranium on this planet ("depleted" and otherwise), why can't it get together with others, settle their differences, in put most of the money into more creative projects?
And haven't you thought that spending on things like NASA might pay in the future? You know, the things known as microchips? If we didn't go to the Moon, we might still be using room size computers and IBMs vision of world market domination with a "dozen or so" computers might be realized :) And there would not no Doom 3!! :)
As Steven Weinberg points out in his excellent article The Wrong Stuff, if we hadn't wasted money on the useless shuttle program, we could instead have simply replaced the Hubble telescope seven times.
Thanks to unmanned space observatories, we now know e.g. that the universe is not "10-20 billion years old", but 13.5-13.9 billion years. With seven Hubbles, could we now have e.g. found extraterrestrial life? Is that worth giving up so that humans can find out what it's like to play a saxophone in space?
I live in Iowa City, IA, home to the University of Iowa and Dr. Van Allen, and I can attest to the fact that this is a regular tirade of Dr. Van Allen's. Why? Because he likes to send up satellites, and manned spaceflight funnels off millions of dollars in NASA funding. He wants the $ for his satelllites. In other words, it's all politics. Surprise.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Van-Allen has done all the homework a Scientist needs to do. He knows all about his particular field and how much it costs to get the information needed to understand his particular field. His limited view of the problem is akin to a scientist peering through a telescope at distant planets, too distracted to notice that his lab is burning down around him
There are six billion humans on this planet and there will be 10 billion before long. We already have global warming to worry about, petroleum shortages, food shortages, and medical crises. We are rather better armed than fed (obesity in the western world notwithstanding :-)
To change the outcome for the species from the most likely (self-annihilation) or the ultimately inevitable (pulverization by an errant space-rock), to survival and expansion we must not only "explore" space in person, but also learn to live and work there.
This is not something that is learned by scientists, it is learned by engineers. It is sometimes referred to as "applied science" but it has no status at NASA or among "real" scientists like Van-Allen. So we spend millions on medical research combatting 40 million years of evolution in a gravity well and zero on a spacecraft with dimensions and spin capable of replicating that well.
There are energy, metal, water and hydrocarbon resources elsewhere than on the surface of the earth. If we want any hope at all of saving the one planet we have real access to we have to use those external resources. It really isn't as hard as it looks, but first we have to learn to live and work in space
So the investment in the ISS is wasteful because a robot did more "science" at less cost? No... It is wasteful only if the only thing you know how to count is "pure" science. The ISS is the IDEAL platform for us to learn to live and work there. The Shuttle is unfortunately, the only vehicle we have to make the trip regularly, but that CAN be corrected. Cheap Access To Space should be one of our two primary projects at NASA and understanding how to live and work there must be the other.
With those two things in hand, exploration of space will be done without further government intervention and our future as a species is all but assured. If either one is managed we MIGHT be able to survive the next century. If we fail to do either one we are as doomed as dinosaurs looking at a sudden bright light on the horizon.
respectfully BJ-beware the man of one book
oh yeha, and the $360billion spent on the military is so much better than the $15b on NASA.
Get a reality check dude, NASa spending is tiny and bugger all compared to the other utter waste, but any way Phisbut, money isnt real, its all fake and printed out of thin air via credit using our fractional reserved banking techniqueues, ie lend out at 10:1 ration of what you have, so 90% of your cash is just a 'printed' version made just like counterfeit.
Us TAX payers on the other hand are really only paying for the government DEBTS, and not government expenditure, (note: public tax income reciepts are near equal government interest payments, ie to bonds etc...). The rest of the money comes from taxes from taxing companies and goods and services at the sales stage.
Part of that adventure is also the 20000 people that helped to make it happen and also the newly designed/cool technology which can be used royalty free by the companies that made it on commercial products in the public world.
Just imagine if nasa invented a qantam communications gadget that would allow zero lag communications at high speeds over infinite distances with zero delay and zero signal loss an d be 100% secure. Great for space probes etc.. but cool aswell in mobile phones with unlimited distance comms.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I hate you and all those like you.
After fifty years of effort, it's clear that chemically-powered launchers are a dead end. Chemical fuels will never get any better. Weight reduction has gone about as far as it can go. Our launchers are terribly fragile, and not getting any better.
If you could build a spacecraft with the weight budget of a commercial airliner, space travel would be straightforward, craft would be reliable, and the technology would be useful. But chemical fuels are just too weak to do the job.
Chemically fueled rockets are the Zeppelins of the space age. They're big, fragile, and have too little load capacity. They work just well enough that you can delude yourself into thinking the technology can become widely useful. But it just can't happen.
This was well known fifty years ago. NASA, and Apollo, led us down a techological blind alley, trying to improve Kennedy's poll ratings.
Until we get something better than chemical rockets, we should stick to unmanned flights.
NASA had a Breakthrough Propulsion Program from 1996 to 2002, but nobody got a solid, reproduceable result of any value.
Nuclear rockets are quite possible; prototype engines were tested in the 1950s. But a crash would be a major disaster. We still can't do fusion. Nor can we create antimatter efficiently. But, fundamentally, we have to harness a better power source or we're not going anywhere.
"That's why we made it out of South Africa and populated the world."
Paeleological evidence suggests Homo Sapiens evolved in the rift valley, which is in the north east of Africa (and is part of the same fault that is responsible for the Persian gulf). It would be more accurate to say Ethiopia than South Africa.