Astronaut Wants Space Program With No Frills

colonist writes "A veteran astronaut wants less comfort and more exploration for future missions. British-born astrophysicist Michael Foale has clocked up 374 days in space, more than any other American astronaut. Foale said, 'We need lean and mean spaceships with no frills', such as toilets or kitchen. However, he would like better oxygen-producing systems for the space station. Foale also talked about the Russians: they played 'some sort of Russian folk song. I'm not so sure it calmed me a lot.' As Foale boarded the Soyuz, an official kicked him in the back: a Russian launch tradition. From space, Foale saw a large black cloud over the Middle East: smoke from a bombed oil pipeline in Iraq."

Comments

Leaving the Garden of Eden

[RobertB-DC]

Foale's suggestions for leaving the comfort zone ring true on several levels. We can't really explore space until we're ready to leave the Garden of Eden behind. So far, we're trying to take it with us -- everything must be 100% safe, from the toilets to the astronauts themselves. We're not going to get past the walls of the garden until there's a flaming sword -- until we must either push forward or die.

I don't neccesarily mean that there will have to be some sort of global catastrophe, just that there will be no real exploration until a group of humans blasts off from Earth with no prospects to return. Ideally, they would be volunteers, but I don't think they can be the perfect psychological and physical specimens we're used to sending into space.

Space simply won't be a "real" place until we have a real human presence, and that means the bad as well as the good. Expanding into the new world takes more than just tilling the land and never moving on. To extend the Eden analogy further: Man didn't really start his journey until Cain's jealousy reached its breaking point. I don't think that's a story of one guy who got mad at his brother -- it's an allegory about mankind's darker side, and how it's an integral part of our experience.

To take a more recent example: when the US lost a dozen-plus troops in Somalia, we left with our tail tucked between our legs. Same thing a few years earlier in Beirut, when a few hundred troops were killed. But now, after losing several thousand lives in 9/11, we're able to bear the loss of hundreds in Iraq and Afghanistan... instead of turning tail, we're actually debating the issue.

We won't reach space in any meaningful way until all of humanity is represented -- both good and bad. That's why we're just spinning our wheels at the moment, playing on the outskirts of Eden. It won't be until Cain shows up -- until someone walks out the airlock in despair, someone fights over resources or a mate, or until there's a war over some metal-rich asteroid -- that humans will truly be able to call themselves citizens of space.

Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden

[RWerp]

I hope you are wrong and that humanity could make a 'new start' in space, without taking everything which is wrong with it to space.

Re:Leaving the Garden of Eden

[SunPin]

People must die to succeed. Americans don't have a tolerance for death to match the amount of people they end up killing. The score in Mogadishu was 4000 dead Somalis to 12 dead U.S. soldiers. The media called that a defeat and the military wasn't sophisticated enough to set it straight. I think the Chinese will _completely_ change the rules of space exploration and make failure/death a necessary part of progress in space. It's no coincidence in my opinion that Americans have no real heroes because nobody lays their life on the line for big ideas. You don't see Foale or Benjamin Harris saying "Fuck it all. Today is a good day to die." That's the kind of attitude _a_ space program needs. Athletes make poor heroes. This space exploration problem runs deep.