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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!
'the only surviving motivation for continuing human spaceflight is the ideology of adventure.'"
And this is a problem because....?
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
I was like, odd hair metal and space don't really seem to go together
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.'"
...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
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
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!
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.
"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)
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
The Honorable Prof. Van Allen has long been a detractor of crewed spaceflight. This is old news. And not very surprising, either.
I am an Iowa Physics and astronomy student. Van Allen works only two floors up from me. Although I don't know him personally, I have certainly read the various articles and commentary posted by his door.
Why not surprising? Professor Van Allen is a pioneer of robotic spaceflight. As a plasma physicist, humans are of little use to him in any place other than on the ground doing data reduction. That's okay, but there are other scientific disciplines such as geology and SETI (which is certainly taken seriously among radio astronomers, contrary to some popular belief) where human investigators are hard to replace.
Is orbiting the earth in an elderly tin can a waste of our time and money? Maybe, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go to Mars.
Even if you don't believe that the scientific merits of spaceflight are worth the cost, consider the technological benefits. Attempting a new task of spaceflight is a technological challenge that yields benefits felt in every corner of society.
The only thing that can be said for the human cost is that astronauts do their jobs fully cognisant of the risk. They know they could be making more money in a safer job in the private sector, but they do it anyway. They have that "ideology of adventure" that Professor Van Allen does not.
When NASA sent out job offers for the astronaut class of 2004, candidates were asked if they would still want the job, even if there was a chance they would never fly in space. All but one said yes. These are people who are fully committed to the enterprise of crewed spaceflight, even at great personal risk. I for one would not stop them from voluntarily assuming that risk "in peace for all mankind." I would also happily join them.
\
He's already got his name on something in space, so he supposes it's time for everybody else to pack up their kit and go home.
"C'mon, everybody, back to Earth. Nothing to see here...except for these VAN ALLEN BELTS, baby! That's right! Booyah! In your FACE!"
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"
Humans were not meant to cook their food. But that worked out OK. Or wear clothes. Also, seems to be alright. Humans also weren't meant to travel faster than we can walk -- our reflexes have trouble with events at high speed -- but we make do. And our world is better for it.
The fallacy you are committing is that there will be a point when we say "ok, NOW we can pursue spaceflight, NOW we are ready" -- thats absurd. We should always be pursuing everything we can, in parallel. To close off thought, or dreams, or progress in any direction because "we arent ready" is foolish. Humans don't learn by not doing - we learn by doing.
Moo.
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
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?
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
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.
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."
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
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.