Slashdot Mirror
The Why of Space Program Races
Deinhard writes "USA Today is running a story about the "why" behind the newly rekindled international space race. From the article: 'The science of space raises levels in areas such as computers, space materials, manufacturing technology, electronic equipment, systems integration and testing.' While it is a matter of national pride, China in specific also sees this as a way to increase the reputation of its high-tech exports."
There is no "space race" for the United States. The next president, whether Republican or Democrat, is likely to terminate the remains of the US manned program. Except perhaps a few flights using Russian hardware. And I say this as a lifelong supporter of manned exploration who fully expected in 1969 to be able to tour the Moon before the end of my life (2040 or so).
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There's valuable things in space. GPS systems; communication systems; Lagrange points; planetary redundancy. Slashdot reported that U.S. Space Command advocates seizing control of the LaGrange points before other nations do it. , and without space races, it'd be hard to do that.
The argument that space research helps technology in general is at least somewhat true. My partner was a chemistry student during the space race working on perfecting liquid crystal desplays as they were safer and used considerably less energy than any other available technology. People probably didn't even consider such uses of LCD until it was needed for space travel. We have NASA to thank for the displays you are probably reading this on.
Unless you are a third-world dictator needing some cheap airplanes, tanks, or guns, (with the sole exception of surplus rocket engines sold to NASA) I don't know of any area where the space-program advanced Russian high-tech exports.
I agree in the case of the US. Nobody doubts Americans have the knowledge to make good products, although that doesn't necessarily translate to good value for money. The German government never needed to go to the moon for its manufacturers to acquire a reputation for quality.
The Japanese, however, suffered for a long time from a reputation acquired in the early 20th century of being yellow monkeys who merely made bad copies of our great white man's gadgets. The Chinese government actually has an argument for wanting the biggest buildings, a space program etc. Chinese products ARE worth less because they are considered inferior, and Chinese achievements will increase the value of the trademark 'Chinese'. The US does not have that argument.
What's interesting is that companies with extremely strong R&D foundations such as IBM and Lucent haven't done as well as low R&D companies such as Dell or Wal-Mart. Companies such as Dell and Wal-Mart show the power of very tightly managed business processes without a lot of the traditional science-based R&D.
I'm not saying that new materials aren't essential to the future, only that these new materials are useless without highly efficient business processes to commercialize them. I hope that space race R&D takes this fact into account.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
That said, why did the USSR give up on the moon after failing to be first, whereas China still wants to go? Your explanation of demonstrating capability might explain China's actions, but not those of the USSR.
Wouldn't it be ironic if we developed all those wonderful things you listed, but it then turned out that in order to make them economically and efficiently, we needed to do it in zero-g. And wouldn't it be a funny ol' world if the Chinese then took our innovations and capitalized on them because they had the zero-g fabs? And in retaliation for their stealing our ideas we used our secret space lasers and blew their fabs out of orbit? And that started WWIII and...
Wait, that wouldn't be funny at all, never mind.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Your argument assumes a few things - most notably, that progress is linear and not sporadic and tangential. That if you want better computers, you should invest in better computers. But to accept that is to accept that interesting solutions to some hard, seemingly unrelated problem apply less well than dedicated research in that specialized domain. I don't accept that. Or that better computers are sufficient motivation in their own right. As an engineer, the carrot offered by space-age research has one heck of a better coolness factor than just earning another paycheck.
Pushing up against the limits often yields the most interesting ideas. And space is one of those big, cold limits that stoke the fires of our imaginations and our resourcefulness. The cube at Intel can't hold a candle.
Having a bunch of smart folks with a budget and a mission, sitting around in a room is a great investment, in large part because of its peripheral benefits. Not everything's planned. Not all development is linear. And not all significant discoveries are immediately relevant. Science for science's sake. Coz it's cool and we get to reap the benefits of its coolness.
It has to do with the NSS document in 2002 stating that the United States should militarize space. The US would love to have the ability to drop a nuke or any other weapon from any point on earth within minutes instead of hours. The Chinese and Europeans are not dumb, so they have to make sure that they can counteract any plans by the United States to dominate space.
It would be ironic, yes. Also astonishing and unlikely, since no one in the business seems to give much of a damn about zero-G fabrication. I don't think it's likely to be important myself -- although I'm no biotech expert at all -- on the basic molecular physics consideration that, on the scale of molecules, the force of gravity is a ridiculously small perturbation. It's hard to think of many systems which are so delicate that gravity can make or break the manufacturing process. Space would arguably be far more valuable as a very cheap enormous ultrahigh vacuum chamber, but unfortunately this chamber is flooded with nasty high-energy radiation.
Actually, I can't persuade myself that space is useful in any serious way for any kind of manufacturing. Hence the real reasons I support space travel enthusiastically are more or less just manifest-destiny expand-or-die arguments. I feel in my bones (i.e. without any articulable rational reason) that cultures that stop looking outward, which no longer produce an excess of men seeking new places to take insane risks with their lives, become moribund and flaccid, and then suddenly die when the next unexpected environmental perturbation comes along.
For this reason, I'm unimpressed with massive and cautious state-sponsored exploration, fleets of ships with all the amenities, safety cushions for everyone, and gold dinner service for the embarked king. I'd look for a crop of wild-eyed unshaven adventurers, in a motley collection of vessels with wildly varying motives and methods and a high mortality rate. The weird look of Rutan's Space Ship One compared to the conservative look of the Shenzhou, and the fact that the Starchaser rocket exploded in everbody's view at the XP Cup shindig in Las Cruces versus the fact that the Chicoms tightly monitor public access to their launches does much to relieve me of any concern that the PRC is now the place to be if you're an egomaniac pioneer with quite possible The Right Stuff, even in aerospace.
Say, how did they get into poverty in the first place? I mean, it's not like China got a late start in the civilization horse race, eh? Wasn't it Mao and the Great Leap "Forward" that were responsible for much of the economic stagnation that plagued China from the early 50s to the late 70s? I thought things only improved when Mr. Little Red Book was shelved and a desperate Party quietly took a few pages from the manifestos of the imperialist running dogs, things like free markets and such.
Anybody who argues against manned space flight should take a long hard look at Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9(http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/). This is a close as a sign, from God, as you will ever get to get the hell off this planet. Having all of humanity on one planet is asking to be wiped out. It was so convenient that this comet happened to hit Jupiter just when Earth happened to have a spacecraft in the area. Just so everybody understands; if even one of those chunks had hit the Earth life would be back to single cell state. We have a clear and present danger. Earth is in a shooting gallery and we need to get self-sufficient colonies elsewhere as fast as possible. To paraphrase Heinlein: "Humans always have and always will live on the edge of disaster."
As for China; I would say watch their plans for the moon. I think China has much bigger plans for the moon than most people realize.