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."

Comments

Justifying space research

[LeonGeeste]

If you've seen my posts on this issue before, you probably know how I hate these justifications for space research See:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164516&cid=137 33897

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=165623&cid=138 20378

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164705&cid=137 47052

Long story short, if you want better computers, research better computers. If you want better materials, research better materials. You shouldn't say "Invest in ways to get into space so we can make better materials". And you shouldn't say "Space research is good because it gets us better computers." It was the computer research that produced the benefit, irrespective of whether that research is "for space" or not. Don't use peripheral gains to justify a different goal. Just say what you mean.

Re:Justifying space research

[Anonymous Coward]

Your missing the point. It does China no good to have better computers if nobody else knows about it. The whole point for China is to sell their products. They need a vehicle to demonstrate their competative improvements they have made in their technicle capabilities. TFA even pointed out China's space effort was not a "crash course" 2 missions in two years is not really much of a space effort. What it does do is get a lot of international press saying WOW! look what they can do! They are hoping that this will make people think "look a chinese car if they can put a guy in space they must make a decent car" rather then "look a chinese car what a piece of crap from an underdeveloped nation".

So yes your point is well taken but there is no point for the Chinese uless they can sell those advancements and the space program is their billboard. Whether it works or not is debateable and yet to be seen but thats the point in this case anyway.

Re:Justifying space research

[andrewrm]

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.

Re:Justifying space research

[dajak]

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.

Re:Justifying space research

[thesandtiger]

This should say: It is the nature of white humans to explore, conquer, and colonize.

Correction, you should have said: "I am completely fucking ignorant of history, and have no idea what I'm talking about."

Re:Justifying space research

[AviLazar]

As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention. Our journey to space has brought us many great technologies...maybe they would have come about anyhow, but they DEFINITELY did come out because of our space endeavors. Some items: Flame retardant material used on the space ship to protect the astronauts is used in fire fighter equipment. Microwave (you know the stuff people use to cook with) was invented for astronauts. Satellite technology - yea those satellites sure don't get up there on their own. There are plenty of other examples.

There are many reasons to explore space:
1)It is an endeavor that will help bind many of us together - look at the projects we do with other countries that surround space travel, even during the cold war -it was one of the few positive connections we had with Russia
2)We are explorers - we always have been...because we first ventured beyond our cave and discovered fire, and then explored accross the ocean to bring us to a new land, and from there we found that we could fly...space is the next step..this is fuel for our souls.
3)The research done can yield new techniques, technologies, etc that may have a benefit to our everyday lives - just reference my example's above.
4)We may not be alone, and while we won't find life (probably) in this generation or the next ten, we eventually will
5)For the tin-foil hat folks - well some asteroid is bound to destroy us eventually, it would be nice if we were say spread out on different planets.
6)Travelling to space and doing research may bring more knowledge to us about us.


I don't care what we use to justify exploration into space, as long as we get there. Unfortunately, our elected officials and all those people who look at the bottom line want to see immediate benefits. You tell them we should spend 50 billion so we can find out that Mars may have had a couple of water molecules 3 million years and politicians will laugh; on the other hand, you tell them that by doing this research we could find a way to bring resources from Mars that will make our lives easier then they are more likely to consider it.

Re:Justifying space research

[ArsonSmith]

Sounds great. Lets just invent a bunch of solutions wether or not they have probelms. I bet Henry Ford could have just invented the Assembly line with building something. I'm sure Ugg said "I build round disk that rolls on ground, someday we find use for it." People don't invent things for the sake of inventing them.

"Necessity is the mother of invention." -someone

Space research is a Necessity that will birth the inventions. You're putting the cart before the horse, as they say.

Re:Justifying space research

[bluGill]

Flame retardant material used on the space ship to protect the astronauts is used in fire fighter equipment.

Not to mention flame retardant material developed for use in movies.

Microwave (you know the stuff people use to cook with) was invented for astronauts.

No, Microwave was invented when engineers noticed that candybars in the pockets started to melt when they stood in front of WWII radar. (which wasn't a smart thing to do, but in the war you cared more about winning than your own life). After the war those engineers worked on making a product out of it. The first Microwaves were used on luxury ships because they were too large for any home (note that today many home microwaves have a large oven chamber and more power than those first ones)

Now I will grant that some things have come sooner because of space research. However what is the cost in things that we could have now if engineers hadn't been focused on space? This question cannot of course be answered, which is why I reject all arguments that space was really good for us. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, since we don't have a proper scientific controlled experiment we cannot know.

Re:Justifying space research

[dominator]

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.

Re:Justifying space research

[hackstraw]

Long story short, if you want better computers, research better computers. If you want better materials, research better materials. You shouldn't say "Invest in ways to get into space so we can make better materials". And you shouldn't say "Space research is good because it gets us better computers." It was the computer research that produced the benefit, irrespective of whether that research is "for space" or not. Don't use peripheral gains to justify a different goal. Just say what you mean.

Until your theory is "more rigorously prove"n, most will accept the animal instinct to do nothing after ones basic needs are met, with the only exception would be some kind of ideology to initiate a change.

Look, plain and simple, "normal" people do not need computers that will survive the vacuum of space and consume very little power, and the g forces of going up and coming down from space. Normal people don't need computers that can survive a nuclear bomb, an Iraqi desert heat, have extra long battery life, and be shock resistant to whatever some grunt puts them through.

However, we all want "more" battery life, and "more" reliable computers, etc.

Space and the military provide these things because they are well beyond people's normal requirements, and engineers work at the edge of current technology with no real constraints on R&D costs nor manufacturing costs. I bolded the last part there for a reason.

For profit companies can spend at most around 10-20% on R&D, and have limits on manufacturing costs.

After reading an article about the Hummer today, I guess this is appropriate. Look at the Hummer. An amazingly successful car that is overpriced and not terribly designed for driving to work or carting kids around. One of the designers was talking about it, and he said that he was on the original design team for the Humvee. In that article, he said that there were no considerations for fuel consumption. The vehicle was designed to replace the Jeep and other transportation and medical vehicles that was designed to drive with flat tires (in the 80s) and through 6 feet of water with continuous service for something like 15 years. He also said, he would never drive one on the road because they were a waste to do so.

Automobile racing is another similar adventure. Nobody is going (except for a stupid ricer who is confused) to spend time and money to put carbon fiber and whatever state of the art into a Neon. But if the R&D for the carbon fiber is already in place and its now known how to manufacture the parts and they are better/cheaper or whatever compared to conventional metal parts, then everybody wins with the newer stuff in their Neon.

Re:Justifying space research

[StalinsNotDead]

Or, maybe a better question, how does one such as yourself get through the day without getting the shit beaten out of them for saying such ignorant things?

Because the comment is percieved to be against one of the few remaining demographics allowing anti-group comments.

Also acceptable:

It is the nature of christians to explore, conquer, and colonize.

or

It is the nature of males to explore, conquer, and colonize.

Re:Justifying space research

[R3d M3rcury]

"[...] I reject all arguments that space was really good for us. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, since we don't have a proper scientific controlled experiment we cannot know."

I'll agree that it's a "Virtual History" question and that there is no way of knowing whether there could have been other paths. But the benefits of space research are proven and should not be ignored. What you're questioning shouldn't be the benefits of space research but, instead, whether there are other better ways to achieve the same results.

To use an analogy, if I take I-5 to CA-22, I'll get home. This is proven. But is it the fastest way to get home at 5:00PM on a weekday? Might another route, say CA-91 to CA-57 to CA-22 be a faster way to get home? Perhaps. To find this out, I would probably have to do various tests and average the times together for the two routes over a given period. But, regardless of whether it is faster or not, I-5 to CA-22 will achieve the desired result: I'll get home. To follow your analogy, you're saying that you don't believe that taking I-5 to CA-22 will get me home because all possible other routes have not been considered.

Thus, you can't really argue that space research benefits various industries which use that research to produce products which have improved our lives. It obviously has and there are plenty of examples of it. I agree with you, though, that the not-so-subtle implication--that if we don't commit to space research, we are doomed to stagnate--is not valid.

Re:Justifying space research

[LeonGeeste]

Space program proponents claim: the space program is/was a good idea, because it led to good thing X.

I claim: It does not suffice to show that Y led to good thing X, to prove that Y was a good idea. You must also show that X was better than what not-Y would have led to.

Example: I take $100 from you. I buy a candy bar. I give you the candy bar. I then claim that the Theft-Candy Program was a good idea because it led to you having a candy bar.

You respond: I could have gotten a candy bar for less than $100. Also, there were things I wanted more than a candy bar. If I had spent my own money on my own needs, I would be better off. Therefore, the $100 candy bar was a waste.

Space program proponents: Government takes ~$100e9 from the economy. It bankrolls a trip to the moon. It then notices that some of the things it made with the intent of getting to the mood happen to have uses outside of getting to the moon. It gives people these technologies to people. It then claims the space program was a good idea because it led to us having the technologies.

I respond: I could have gotten those technologies for less than $100e9. Also, there were more pressing needs at the time. If consumers had spend their own money on their own needs, money would have been invested in satisfying demands higher on consumers' priority lists, and they would be better off. Therefore, the $100e9 was a waste.

The only real difference is that people have a "hard time" imagining private industry investing that forgone income in technology, because of public goods' problems, shortsightedness, etc. But those are separate arguments, rarely discussed in the context of the space program. Space program proponents typically stop at "The space program produced good thing X. Ergo, it was better than all alternatives"... which is really a poor argument when you think about it. I didn't start this thread to deny other possible justifications, just to deny that that one is valid.

Let's go over your LCD example again. NASA saw the possibility of LCD technology. More than likely, so did many people not working for NASA. All of those people at the time ruled it out as not being cost effective for consumer and industrial purposes. But NASA wasn't satisfying specific consumer or industrial demands: its solitary goal was to get a man on the moon and get him back safely. That alters the equation. An LCD may be cost-effective for that specific goal. So it produced this thing, which at the time was probably not cost effective for actual other human desires. Had it not happened, those funds would be diverted to higher-ranked cost-effective consumer and industrial demands outside of getting to the moon. Because such funds would then be directly targeted at pressing human desires, rather than getting to the moon, it is very likely they would have yielded something better, as judged by the average person (i.e., the benchmark you used to justify the LCD in the first place).

Now, you do have a point that maybe NASA "saw the light" and "guessed right" that the LCD had more and better uses than entrepreneurs at the time judged. But, like I keep saying, "that's not enough". You have to show that the government's "guessing what satisfies human desires" is correct more often than private entrepreneurs "guessing what satisfies human desires" in the aggregate - i.e., that the Social Security Administration is more efficient than McDonald's. Showing that the government outguessed private industry one time doesn't prove much.

Since private industry directly targets human desires, while the space program was targeting getting to moon; and since private industry guesses consumer desires and cost-effectiveness generally better than the government, the diversion from private industry into a government program not specifically intended to develop better technology likely means we got something not as good as what we could have.

Now, agree or not, do you understand the point I'm trying to make?

Re:Justifying space research

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Justifying space research

[ghoul]

The thing is you have to have some kind of candy to tempt the smart kids. Let me elaborate. In grade school the smartest kids can figure out they can have a much easier time in college and a richer life if they become Doctors and Lawyers than Engineers and Scientists. So why do these kids go into Engineering. It is the dream of mega projects like the Space program. Of course most Engineers dont make it to NASA but they spend their lives in guilt thinking they are not good enough and work their asses off for private industry hence providing the life blood of the country. Take away the space program, military research(which is cool in a nerdish way) and soon all you would have left would be Doctors, Lawyers , Plumbers and others who feed off the misery and misfortune of others. The politicians understand this better than you do hence they continue the funding

Notice to the rest of the world

[j_cavera]

Bring it on! (BTW, Burt Rutan _is_ on our side, right?)

Re:Notice to the rest of the world

[BerntB]

Bring it on! (BTW, Burt Rutan _is_ on our side, right?)

But so is NASA; maybe the worst money sink history has known. :-(

(At least the new director went out and said that the shuttle and the space station cost at $250 billion were huge wastes of resources that should have had better uses. There might be hope, yet.)

No space race for US

[sphealey]

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).

sPh

Re:No space race for US

[Karma_fucker_sucker]

The next president, whether Republican or Democrat, is likely to terminate the remains of the US manned program.

If that should happen, then that would be a sign to me that the US is definitely in decline. I have a hope that this current trend of declining interest in science and engineering will turn around one day and we (the US) will go back to being the creators that we once were. I'm not saying that everyone needs to become a scientist or an engineer (I for one have no talent for it: just a fan). I'm just saying that hopefully we'll start to encourage our youth to pursue their interests in those areas instead of telling them, no showing them with outsourcing/offshoring, that they're better off going to medical or law school if they want to have a secure future.

Re:No space race for US

[rctay]

The public wants to go somewhere. LEO isn't interesting. They don't want to hear about the science, they want a bloody space opera. The ISS is dead. There's not enough heavy lift capacity to keep it going, much less finish it. If one more shuttle is lost or even a close call that program is dead. It will be 10 years before a new crew rated vehicle flies, and several more years before rapid turn around is accomplished. China may end up the tortoise in the classic tortoise vs hare race.

The space race...

[jamesgamble]

The Earth's resources are dwindling and if we intend to survive the next two thousand years, we're going to have to find resources elsewhere to sustain ourselves. It's not soley a matter of scientific interest now, but a matter of survival.

Re:The space race...

[Alef]

Or we could just learn to recycle the resources we have. Very few resources have left the Earth (a few space probes and some atmosphere mainly), so why do we need to bring more of them here?

Re:The space race...

[lawpoop]

How about learning how to successfully or sustainably manage resources once we do find them? Space is vast and empty. We live in a cornucopia. If we're screwing up this badly while living in a virtual paradise, there's no way we can survive the 1000+ year trip to the next planet. We'd eat ourselves of out food a fuel 10 years into the space journey.

Military conquest

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

High tech is good but....

[tktk]

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.

What I really want to see are low-tech solutions to the space race. Not to prove your own country's superiority but to make other governments look bad. Any large government can throw billions or trillions of dollars to get into space.

What I want to see is some guy get into space by sitting on a huge jug of exploding moonshine.

Pfft.

[Britissippi]

There is no real country based 'space race' anymore in the western world. Corporations are going to take over where the governments leave off. China is 50 years behind the times, and eventually it'll be the corporations there that take over the space flights, too.

Re:Pfft.

[TrevorB]

China may be 50 years behind (let's say 45 to be more accurate), but the US is about 25 years behind (Shuttle) and Russia about 38 years behind.

We could be kinder to each country. The US has been upgrading their shuttles with newer materials. The Russians developed a new variant of their Soyuz craft (TMA class) as recently as 2002.

However America is about to go with a new CEV design, which while an upgrade in technology basically puts them back to where they were in 1968.

I'm very impressed with the Shenzhou spacecraft. It's larger than Soyuz by about 10-20%, which itself had significantly more space available than Apollo did on its own (not sure about Apollo-LEM). It's orbital module can operate autonomously, staying in orbit for many months, making the potential for Shenzhou orbital modules to be used as space station components. If its launch safety can be shown to be equivelant to Soyuz, the Shenzhou spacecraft will be the best operating in 2010.

The actual "space race" may be taking place now, in the design stage of the American CEV. Can they build a craft superior to the Chinese?

China has been building a lot of momentum here, while the US has stalled. I'm very curious to know how things will turn out in the next decade.

Re:Pfft.

[Guppy06]

"Corporations are going to take over where the governments leave off."

Why? Unless tomorrow somebody discovers something everybody must have and must be made in microgravity, or some probe discovers a huge stash of unobtainium on the surface of Mars, there's no commercial impulse for space travel to progress beyond where it is now: putting microwave repeaters into geosynchronus orbit.

Exploration (space or otherwise) is nothing if not a long-term investment, and Wall Street prefers the short-term to boost quarterly profits.

Re:Pfft.

[Martin Blank]

However America is about to go with a new CEV design, which while an upgrade in technology basically puts them back to where they were in 1968.

Just because it's a capsule design doesn't mean that it's a step backwards in technology. Your argument seems to be based on the capsule to shuttle to aerospace plane development map that failed.

I would argue that the CEV is a step forward, because it adds flexibility to the design. The second phase of the CEV includes not only a lunar module, but also the capacity to start building a lunar base. Where the Apollo mission could support two people on the lunar surface for a maximum of three days, the CEV will be able to support four people on the surface for a week, and those four people will be able to do much more than just pick up a few rocks and wander a few hundred meters at a time.

I base where we are on what we can do once we get there. If the CEV merely duplicated Apollo, that would put us back at 1968, and would be a sad waste of tax dollars. If it's capable of living up to its promise, then that puts us much further along, and only 10-15 years behind where we should be.

Re:Simple

[halivar]

Simple; the US is not #1 anymore, China is starting to stand on their two feet, so, this is suddenly an ego thing again. God I love being Canadian.

Hah! You earth-bounders are just jealous of our enormous rocketships! If you had rocketships like we do, you'd be racing, too. But you'd lose, because our rocketships are bigger than anyone else's!

TO THE MOON!!!

The original reason for the space race

[mbkennel]

It was a proxy for development of ICBM technology. An ICBM warhead is a satellite whose orbit happens to intersect the surface of the earth.

Having the capability for heavy lift, accurate guidance, precise orbital adjustments and robust communication shows that your ICBMs are probably also just as good, without divulging specific classified technological details.

Basic research is very good (and underfunded and underappreciated) but there is also something significant to be learned when basic research is applied to a rigorous problem, e.g. space technology, before it has to hit the commercial market.

There is the "valley of death" in R&D development: it takes about 25 years from a technology to go from lab discovery to commercial development.

Academic development does the first 7 years, by then it is "old" and professors can't really write good papers or get good grants and tenure dicking around with small things.

Commercial development funds the last 2 years only.

The middle is the Valley of Death and you need some kind of funding source and goal to take technologies from a lab formula to a product of economic significance.

Re:The original reason for the space race

[timeOday]

I agree govt. ought to fund research to bridge academic and commercial interests, but that is apart from the parent's argument - that space research sometimes proceeds on weak justification by touting gains in other fields. To me, your argument that "China wants ICMBs" is much more concrete (and believable) than the argument that China wants to discover next-generation Tang or Velcro.

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.

Re:The original reason for the space race

[Guppy06]

"An ICBM warhead is a satellite whose orbit happens to intersect the surface of the earth."

Wrong limiting case. Orbit is a ballistic arc that continually misses. It's easier to put something in a ballistic arc (Freedom 7, SpaceShip 1) than it is to put something into orbit (Vostok 1, Friendship 7). Anybody that can put something into LEO can build an ICBM, but not everybody that can build an ICBM can put something into LEO.

The USA/USSR space race was pure politics that spun off from missile technology. It just so happens that, at the time, Soviet nuclear weapons were considerably heavier than their American counterparts, even heavier than a manned capsule, so it was simple to modify an existing Soviet ICBM to put a lighter payload into orbit.

Re:The original reason for the space race

[photon317]

We haven't completely replaced all of those technologies.

Drafters still like to use drafting boards, even when they've got advanced CAD tools sitting right next to them. Technology has not managed to obviate the need for a drafting board.

Adding machines? Have you been in a store lately that wasn't run by a multi-national meglomaniac corporation? Many smaller stores and businesses still don't put a PC at the front desk, instead they use big fat 70's looking calculators. Even when they do have PCs, they often still stick to the little electonic adding machines because it's more convenient than firing up a calculator app at a computer terminal. (Ok, I know you meant the big room-sized calculating computers, but I had to have something for this item, so I'm feigning ignorance. In any case transistors were already around at the time, all we've done since is shrink them, not replace them...)

Most POTS telephone lines in the US still support rotary dialing AFAIK (at least they did last time I cared, maybe 5 years ago). While it takes a little longer, it is more reliable (even with a broken dialer, you can tap out the numbers manually with the hangup switch). And many customers, especially if older aged or living in rural areas, actually possess rotary phones.

Space race? What space race?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I strongly suspect the driving force for the Chinese space program (much like the US and USSR), is to build ICBMs. If you can put a man in space, you can put a nuke anywhere in the world in 30 minutes or so. And it's very hard to shoot down an ICBM.

Re:Space race? What space race?

[Andy Tai]

But mainland Chinese have had ICBMs since the 1970s...

Worked for the Russians -- NOT!

[Derling Whirvish]

Oh yeah, that strategy worked so well for the Russians. How's that Russian cell phone you are using? Reading this on a Russian computer? How about your GLONASS receiver? Your Russian-built TV? Washer-dryer? Car? Tractor even? Combine-harvester?

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.

R&D doesn't buy business growth

[G4from128k]

This study of $384 billion in R&D spending by 1,000 companies finds no correlation between R&D spending or patents and a company's growth, profitability, or shareholder return. Part of the problem probably stems from too much R and too little D.

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.

Re:R&D doesn't buy business growth

[Kelson]

Clearly, the solution for profitable business is to let someone else do all the research and development, then implement the results yourself without the burden of a huge money sink.

Actually, that's fairly typical of many industries. The leading edge is dragged down by the overhead of all the experimentation, and once they've worked out a system, the imitators have a much smoother ride. It's easier to stand on giants' shoulders than to build the stilts yourself.

fighting the last war

[Quadraginta]

Eh, this is the problem with Stalinist top-down economic planning. The Chicoms are fighting the last (economic) war here. I seriously doubt the future belongs to the nation that makes best progress in rocket technology, semiconductors, or high-energy materials physics for that matter. Sure, these things are important, but they are well-developed, mature fields of research, and there's no indication that Holy Cow Wow low-hanging fruit breakthroughs are just waiting to happen.

But it's a different story in biotech, nanotech or even funky networked software, which are areas where the US is megaparsecs ahead of the Chinese and if anything pulling away. Sure, a new cadre of starry-eyed Chinese metallurgists and aerospace engineers are going to have influence on the future, make stuff that people in the rest of the world -- say, in Southeast Asia or Africa -- are going to want to buy.

But what about the American firm that comes up with proteomics-based individualized cancer therapies that double lung cancer survival rates? Or a little in utero genetic magic that can cure cystic fibrosis or guarantee perfect vision and superior resistance to infection in every newborn child? How about a vaccine against Alzheimer's so everybody can be as sharp in their 90s as they were in their 50s? Cure for AIDS? Rapid-response antiviral technology that can snuff out avian flu before it gets started? Networking applications infrastructure that make it plausible for most of us to work anywhere without commuting further than from the bedroom to the home office? Nanoscopic fuel cells that let portable electronics work for days or weeks at a time off the electric grid? Any of those future-tech possibilities seems to me way more lucrative to bring to the international market in 2050 than the ability to build rockets or memory chips that are 5% more efficient than anyone else. So if I were buying stock in countries based on their R&D focus, I'd pass up the Chinese as slugfeet, based on their 1960s-era research focus.

Maybe it's just because I remember hearing similar arguments about Korean and Japanese innovations in steel- and auto-making in the 1980s, when American business was jumping out of heavy industry and getting into such weird niche vanity businesses like personal computers. (I mean, who the heck needed a computer on every single desk, just to play Solitaire and Zork and customize the fonts on your letters? Geez, you want computations, go to the computer center and punch a deck like everybody else...)

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, sure, but how many mega-millionaires has China created? The only true measure of the wealth of a nation is how many ultra rich it has. Anyone who makes less than $1,000,000 per year shouldn't count anyway. What have the poor ever done for us? Everyone knows that all wealth is created by the rich. If you want to be better off as a nation kill all the poor and never make the rich pay taxes. The rich are obviously favored by God, if not actually Divine in some way. The fact is, poor people are not selfish enough to succeed, and as we all know, selfishness is next to godliness, so they are all going to hell anyway.

Re:250 million people in 20 years

[FooGoo]

In the US we don't have poverty like they do in China. In the US being poor means you rent a DVD once a month instead of once a week.

nothing is monocausative

[globaljustin]

or, to say more correctly, technological advancements partially justify manned space programs.

you said in a previous post:

"Hey, all you entrepreneurs working on technologies to satisfy actual human desires: STOP. Give us money so we can show the Ruskies where it's it."

Do you deny the strategic advantages of space? Do you have any doubt that Russia was seeking to gain power and eventually dominion over the U.S. in some way? You can validly say that the U.S. space program was run very ineffiently, but to say that it was ONLY about beating the Russians, well, that's just wrong. Here's where I link this to your latest comment...nothing on a macro scale is monocausative.

You assume that there is always ONE central reason for something happening. Especially on the international stage, this is a fatal assumption.

And you shouldn't say "Space research is good because it gets us better computers."

Why not???

It was the computer research that produced the benefit, irrespective of whether that research is "for space" or not. Don't use peripheral gains to justify a different goal.

You wish the people in power would just:

Just say what you mean

Well my friend, especially in America, things are NOT THAT SIMPLE. It's just a reality of our American system of business, government, and research. Did we go to the moon for exploration? Yes. Did we go there to enrich texas businesses? Yes. Did we go there to prove to the Russians that we are dominant? Yes. Did we go there for science? Yes. Did we go there to advance computer technology? Yes.

We went to the moon (culmination of space race, btw) for myriad reasons because that is how America works, by consensus. Different groups with different, sometimes overlapping, interests get together for common good. The more we get together, the more we accomplish...the individual stick is weaker than a bundle of....yeah you get the idea.

So, your criticism of 'going to space just for research' is invalid...b/c whenever we go to space, there are many reasons, not one...we never went to space just for research.

mod parent down

[globaljustin]

mod parent down...this is flame and it is inaccurate.  What possible definition of 'poverty' did poster use?  What statistics?  Are these official Chinese Government stats?

Blind quotaions of random flame statistics such as this should be detected by moderators as flame already...mod down mod down mod down

Re:Simple

[brendalson]

To tell the truth, it's the fact that they see human life the way they do that is going to make their journeys into space interesting. We Americans over engineer everything to be as safe as we can make it. One of the large drawbacks to this is that we don't take to many risks and chances when human life is concerned. It's something that China isn't going to worry about. They won't over engineer and they will be willing to take risks that we won't. Yes, they are going to lose people. Yes, bad things are going to happen for them. But they are going to go a great distance in a short amount of time in the "space race" because of it.

ironic indeed

[Quadraginta]

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.

Re:250 million people in 20 years

[Quadraginta]

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.

ICBMs

[Doc Ruby]

I'm all for space development. I want to see its benefits in all those things pursued. But the truth is that the US and Soviet Union raced to space as a way to develop Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles with nuclear warheads. Nations continue to pursue this path for those same reasons, with more or less the same priority for the ballistic missile research. That doesn't mean we have to keep prioritizing the warfare research. But we shouldn't pretend that we've gotten our priorities straight until we actually have.

Here is the why of the space race

[SouthSong]

Preparation for military expression of might. China has beefed up its military wing and by entering the space race it builds nationalism. It will need national support to overcome something like taking over Taiwan and rebuffing U.S. Counter Strike.

US - China debt

[captaineo]

I wonder if China is attempting to goad the US into spending billions more on space exploration... Money that will come in the form of treasury debt to the Chinese central bank.

The "manned" and the "un-manned"

[betasam]

Personally, I believe space research may be vital for us for research and experiments which cannot be performed within the earth's atmosphere, but provide vital clues to theoretical physicists to validate theories. The most successful space programmes have been "unmanned" including the Voyager series (no not the Star Trek one you see on TV), Galileo, Ulysses to name a few. The Mars Rovers that gave us quite a lot of detail from Martian terrain were "un-manned", and yet provided necessary scientific information.

Even Carl Sagan would agree that a "manned" mission under current conditions is more of a publicity stunt and a splurge of tax money. MIT's robotics labs believe they could have clustered robots (or swarm robots) programmed to search for vital mineral resources on unexplored planet terrain providing clues for life or proto-life. The Space Research programmes (be it USA or erstwhile USSR or China or even India in the future) are in the most part publicity stunts. Part of it is because of political control over the immense amount of funding required in Space research. I am not sure that one would want to spend billions of $$$s to boost public morale and achieve far too little in scientifically. I often wonder how ancient astronomy progressed significantly without the use of much equipment, but on the basis of pure observation and correlation. Some day science would be the turf for scientists, for now so long as BIG funds are necessitated, publicity stunts and "manned" missions will be inevitable.

I can't imagine humans going to the moon to collect debris and bring them 'home' for analysis when we have the technology to avoid this. No one walks into a volcanic vent to collect geological data, into which we have robots going where no man has gone before. They do provide useful scientific data, which can be scientifically analysed in non-realtime. I am not aware of a situation where a significant "realtime" response is required to have a "manned" mission to the moon (or into a volcanic vent), enough to justify endangering the life of the astronauts. (This is not about the "thrill" of space tourism.) Of the few "manned" successes was "Hubble" and the Orbital Space Stations which too can be assembled today with lesser human intervention.

Sid Says

[focitrixilous P]

Unless one of the countries wipes out everyone else, the only way to win is to get to Alpha Centauri, and the tech tree is not nearly devloped enough at the moment. The space race is just the preliminaries for the real race.