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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.'"
"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)
Such as...?
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.