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Commission Suggests UK Should End Astronaut Ban
An anonymous reader writes "According to the BBC a British scientific panel has recommended that the British Government should end its ban on human space flight. The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) Commission pursued a 9-month investigation into 'The Scientific Case for Human Space Flight'. Professor Frank Close, Chair of the Commission, said, 'We commenced this study without preconceived views and with no formal connection to planetary exploration. Our personal backgrounds made us lean towards an initial skepticism on the scientific value of human involvement in such research.' The commission concluded that 'profound scientific questions relating to the history of the solar system and the existence of life beyond Earth can best - perhaps only - be achieved by human exploration on the Moon or Mars, supported by appropriate automated systems.'"
I don't think that's what the original poster was asking. The question wasn't 'why not send a man to space', but 'why ban sending a man to space'. The point being, why was it nessecery to ban it, as opposed to just deciding not to do it?
Japan, Europe and Israel, for example, have very good space programs with no manned flights, but none of them saw the need to ban it.
Is it like the old joke -
"In America, everything which is not banned is legal.
In Germany, everything which is not allowed is illegal.
In Soviet Russia, everything which is not banned is mandatory."
"In Britain, everything which is not worth doing is banned."?
Does this ban extend to private spaceflight as well?
Kind of like when I was in the British Isles and people found out I was from America and they would ask if I knew so-and-so from usually Boston or New York. Ignore the fact I lived in Arizona at the time and hadn't been to either city, there are about 300 million people in America. Can't really say that all of the British are like that, I have had that experience more than I care to remember. Bottom line: there are stupid people everywhere. The cream of the crop are a little harder to find.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
Because it was considered by just about every scientist alive at the time of Apollo that there was absolutely no scientific value in sending a man to the Moon. Not just British scientists but Americian scientists too held this opinion. Many still hold this opinion today.
This is such a sad statement, and inaccurate. The Apollo missions were incredibly productive. The first geological exploration another world? 6 missions exploring amazingly diverse sites. Apollo contibuted greatly geomorphology, volcanology, geochemistry, isotope studies, remnote sensing, mapping... The Apollo mission reports are still available. Read them. I doubt you will feel the same way. As a former planetary geologist I can assure you that that opinion is not widespread in that community.
If you say this about Apollo, what do you think about the pointless research on the even more expensive space station?
an ill wind that blows no good
Um...aren't the SRBs already human-rated? They are used on the Shuttle Transport System, after all, the entirety of which is human-rated.
I think what you meant to say is that the second stage for the "Scotty" rocket, or single stick booster topped by humans, will need to be built and human-rated.
Also, you are underestimating the work that is involved with the Heavy Lift vehicle. You say: That is nothing more than moving the 3 engines from the shuttle to 5 on the bottom of the fuel tank. There's a LOT of engineering that has to go into that. First of all, the O2 and the hydrogen go through feul conduits on the side of the external tank, not down to the bottom; the feul lines (which are 12" diameter) will have to be routed through the tanks. Since the tanks are built to withstand the pressure of the warming cryogenic liquids, this is no small task. Additionally, the structure of the external tank is built to withstand forces from hanging the weight of the Orbiter on the side; the entire tank will need to be tweaked very carefully to withstand longitudinal loads of having engines on the bottom but the payload on the top.
Finally, your comparison of the Shuttle's payload to the heavy lift's payload isn't a good one either--the orbiter weighs something in excess of 60 metric tons, and should be included in the payload amount. It does go into orbit, after all, that's why they call it the Orbiter. If you just removed that and side-mounted a payload bay right now, you could get 80 metric tons into orbit no problem, without redesign of the external tank, and without extending the boosters to five segments, and you'd be using the safest, simplest parts of the Shuttle system..
Pity that it's only around 80 tons, that's not really enough to get to the Moon with the architecture that NASA has right now.
Oh, and the difference between 60 miles and 300 miles isn't actually 240 miles--orbital velocity is sideways velocity, otherwise you just go up and then fall back down into the same general area. The ide is to move sideways fast enough that when you fall, you fall around the Earth, not back to it. To do a suborbital flight you don't need to go very fast. To go into orbit, the minimum velocity is about 7.5 km/sec, and a Lunar flight requires about 11.5 km/sec. The differences are staggering, especially when you think about the problem of slowing down from 11.5 km/sec!
Because it was considered by just about every scientist alive at the time of Apollo that there was absolutely no scientific value in sending a man to the Moon. Not just British scientists but Americian scientists too held this opinion. Many still hold this opinion today.
I agree. I mean, why send people into space. After all, don't those satellites fix themselves. Hubble almost certainly has required no human interaction. Even if it did, it was of no scientific value. Obviously sending and/or building on our only natural satellite could only end up just as fruitless. And, sex only for the purpose of procreation. Otherwise it has no value. Jam on toast? I'll take the dry white toast any day! Computers for the common peasant, but what would they need with a computer?
Yes, that's sarcasm. If it wasn't, someone shoot me.
An unimaginative scientist that can't find the scientific value in the exploration of the unknown... I think that disqualifies them for the title "scientist". One can argue the cost all day, but to argue the scientific value of exploration... unscientific exploration is the very definition of oxymoron. It is, I looked it up and everything.
I8-D