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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.'"
Isn't the real question - Why was it banned in the first place?
I mean, seriously. That's all I can say. What the fuck?
I mean shit, I know it's a waste of money but to BAN it? Someone needs to get beat with a billy club.
that the report comes out couple of days after the Chinese astronauts return to Planet Earth.
"Come in Swindon. I'm at the top of the ladder now. Ohhh, it's very high, I can see my house from up here! I'm still a long way away..I think we'll need more ladders."
Eddie Izzard sums out the British philosophy to space exploration.
Because you can't have tea in space?
Didn't they see James Bond: Moonraker?!
If you send humans into space, evil madmen will form space station communes and plot global genocide!
I have to admit, I can see their point!
Considering the whole "aluminum" vs. "aluminium" flamewar we've had in a recent story (it's like vi vs. emacs, only there's no ed), it seems all they'd need to be "culturally different" is to throw in a few extra letters. "Astrounaughtte?"
In related news, India, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Maldives, Gambia, Canada, Hong Kong, and all the other former British colonies banded together to send a message to the moon, Mars, and the other planets. It read "Watch out for these guys! They've got a flag!"
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
That's cool stuff and all, but I'm something of a pragmatist, so hopefully I won't offend too many of the resident idealist when I suggest that the previously enumerated justifications don't hold water as far as spending billions on a space program goes.
Knowing the history of solar system has next to zero humanitarian worth. And while maybe, just maybe finding alien life could yield some pharmaceutical benefits, all present evidence indicates that life is a localized earth phenomena. There is not much reason to expect to find any microbes on Titan or Mars or anywhere else except for hopeful thinking. Which is fine, and maybe there's a full fledged intelligent civilization living under ice sheets on one of the Jovian moons, but you don't send an expedition to the back of the moon looking for the Fountain of Youth just because it might be there.
That's not to say this knowledge doesn't have any worth. It has aesthetic worth, like the Sistine Chapel. Heck, as a student of physics, my defining goal is to further elucidate the nature of the universe. Personally, I assosciate an incredible worth with knowing more about its formation.
But I wouldn't support my government spending billions on an art project, even one I would appreciate, and likewise, I don't think 'history of the solar system' is likely to be the best allocation of the funds.
Now, colonizing space is a whole nother spiel as far as justifying an investment. I think there are immense humanitarian benefits inherit to that--many, as exampled by the U.S. space program, that will arise sheerly incidental to the effort without us having any idea about them beforehand. Zero gravity refinement of synthetic materials, solar mirrors to assist in growing crops (and maybe dissipating hurricanes?), extending our habitat to deal with overcrowding... these all seem like things that a wealthy government might be doing its people a favor by investing in.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
There is a limited supply of it. The question is, do you focus on the automated robotics or on the human missions?
A good example is that GWB is gearing NASA to spend heavily on the moon shot. So they just fired 300 top engineers at JPL. JPL has done a fair number of the automated systems. I would expect that the private enterprise will pick these ppl up. Most have a great deal of talent and interest.
The moon shot will costs more than a 100 billion dollars to get us back there. Hopefully this time, we do not dismantle such an expensive set-up.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But if the UK ends up inventing things related to space flight, then all they'll have to research after that will be the following:
...
Future Tech 1
Future Tech 2
Future Tech 3
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Ok, but you've got admit he's right that we still ride donkeys.
In fact, with the success rate to date, from Blue Streak to Beagle 2, the chance of a British astronaut getting out of the atmosphere in one piece is so low that anybody volunteering for a space program needs a quick trip to a secure mental health unit instead.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Considering the whole "aluminum" vs. "aluminium" flamewar we've had in a recent story (it's like vi vs. emacs, only there's no ed), it seems all they'd need to be "culturally different" is to throw in a few extra letters.
Which reminds me of my hairdresser when I was last in America (ok, she's a middle-aged hairdresser, so not totally representative of the general IQ of Americans, but other Aussies have told me similar stories). Of course she asked where I was from, so I told her "Australia", then she told me how it was only a couple of weeks ago when she had in an Austrian guy as a client that she realised that Australia wasn't just a mis-spelling of Austria. She then proceeded to ask me what language we spoke in Australia. So yes, a few letters does make quite a cultural difference.
The answer to both of those questions is: The UK doesn't have any good launch sites. We're in Northern Europe, in case you hadn't noticed, and you can't launch rockets from there (at least, not without considerably higher costs/risks than doing it closer to the equator).
It comes down to empire. The French still exhert ownership over a couple of countries that have good launch sites. The UK does not.
The idea of us ringing up the Australians and saying "What ho! We're going to build a rocket base in your outback. Look, I know you chaps think you're independent now, but Queen Liz says to tell you to bally well stuff off" is just not going to fly, I'm afraid.
True, we're part of the European Space Agency.
But it seems rather pointless to have a space programme when you have to ask other people to launch it for you.
Especially if those other people are the French.
I do hope I don't have to explain quite how horrifying the idea of a British citizen patriotically launching into space to the sound of "Cinq... quatre... trios... deux... un!" sounds to the average Brit.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
Sorry, your comments are wrong.
There was, and still is, for instance, an active policy "against" space launch technology in the UK, which has been in place since the days of Blue Streak. Partly due to having 650 or so mainly arts graduates sitting in a large debating chamber and not understanding why we are consistently throwing away technological opportunities, partly due to pressure in the past from our supposed partner the other side of the pond leaning on us to drop launch technology and use theirs (shades of other programmes such as TSR2 and Skybolt), and partly due to an active dislike of space within Whitehall, and a major and irrational dislike against launch technology and manned space.
I have been in space meetings in the UK where government representatives have said do not under any circumstances mention anything to do with manned space. To which my response is to give them the finger. To say they have wasted a generation's talents which could have been used on space technology in the UK would be an understatement. They've wasted at least 2 generations.
The whole HOTOL, and later SKYLON lack of support from the UK government, and lack of participation in FESTIP is yet another example of this myopic, and moronic attitude by some faceless bureaucrats in Whitehall. An attitude that they have passed on down the years.
So yes, banned is an appropriate word for manned involvement in space and the UK government.
This kind of reasoning makes me break out in hives. It's like saying the way to be an innovative company is to look at other innovative companies and copy what they do. Sometimes the thing to do when everyone is doing A is to find something the B that everybody else is not doing, where marginal returns are higher.
So, putting two and two together, this is political and diplomatic rather than scientific an technical. Which is not to say "not worthwhile", but justifications have to be found elsewhere. A couple of hundred million pounds a year is not going to get Britain its own space capability by a long shot, but it will allow it to play with other nations.
As a counter example,engineers on the Mars Exploration Rover Mission found their equipment could be kept functioning well past their orignial goals and decided to keep them doing science until they die. We won't be doing that with astronauts. It might be the next best step for marginal returns is a manned mission, but I doubt it. My point here is that we should not be overly concerned with the apparent flexibility of a mission component, which after all people would be, without taking into the account their impact on the overall flexibility of the mission and the program.
I wonder if some British national pride was hurt by the failure of the Beagle 2. That mission was way outside the box in terms of ambition for funding. It might have been a brilliant success. The lesson of the Beagle 2 mission should NOT be (in my opinion) that robotic missions are too risky. It should be that taking ambitious risks entails experiencing failure, otherwise it's neither ambitious or risky. Put in perspective, Britain could have launched twenty Beagle 2 missions (more if fixed costs are amortized) for the price of the dual Mars Exploration Rover mission; if it had a 10% chance of success they'd be in the same place in terms of mission success, but gained a great deal more technical expertise. Not only would this expertise enhance national prestige indirectly through increased capabilities, I believe that success after a number of failures would yield more prestige directly, ironic though that may be. It would remind people that you're trying something difficult and risky.
I'm not against manned space exploration; I'm for getting the most science out of our buck -- er -- pound. I'm not convinced that a manned mission is scientifically or technically the best marginal investment at this time. Even in terms of national prestige, I'm not convinced that manned missions are what they used to be. If the public wants to see George Clooney in a s
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I really don't get this - they banned it because they couldn't think of a scientific reason to go to space??
Come on! If that's right, then the UK should also ban everything else that is not accompanied by a team of ressearchers, including the average person simply getting out of bed in the morning.
Space exploration has much more to offer than simple scientific knowledge. It is known that the Earth will eventually perish, when the sun explodes into a red giant, so space exploration offers, at least, survival of the species!
Also, there are currently more than 6 billion people on this planet. We cannot sustain that. And I really don't trust that we, as a species, are capable of adjusting our lifestyles to become sustainable. So, spave exploration is inevitable!
You simply can't ban something which is inevitable!
What's hard to understand? There was a ban placed on the use of public funds to do manned space exploration because it was considered a waste of money by the scientific community. When you consider how much money is wasted on the ISS every year you gotta appreciate they may have a point.
No they don't have a point. The ISS it self has had a number of problems but calling the basic idea of an ISS a waste of money because one of the implementations of that idea sucks is plain stupid. Like any other elementary scientific research (be it in physics, genetics, mathematics, computing....the list goes on), studying the problems of manned space exploration requires the vision to see that the knowledge gained from experimental installations we are building today will perhaps only be useful some 50 or even 100 years from now. In fact some of the uses we find for this knowledge will be things we cannot not dream of today. The ISS and manned space flight in general may not serve much of a practical, profit generating purpose today and this will probably be true for decades to come but that is not the point. The point is that the ISS and manned space flight in general is fundamental research that we are going to need the day we have advanced far enought to enable us to economically travel to other parts of our solar system. It is easy to point a finger at projects like this one and call it a waste of money the tough bit is opening your eyes and seeing the benefits farther down the road.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
There has been one British astronaut flying under a UK flag, Helen Sharman, on a Soyuz, in 1991.
it seems all they'd need to be "culturally different" is to throw in a few extra letters.
Well done at rewriting history. Brits don't had in extra letters, Americans remove letters willy nilly. Everyone knows it's truly Astronaught, which was one of the reasons the Brittish banned manned space flight. Unfortunately this article doesn't mention that problem at all.
Looks like we're getting jealous of the Chinese.
I live there, but what a typical European move, they have one so we've got one. I'd bet that if the manned Chinese flight had fucked up, we be hearing "Oh! Well, we have a non manned flight policy!"
Secondly, which Briton in his right mind will volenteer for a manned Brit spaceflight, the last unmanned one we sent up (first in like 20 years, my god the hype they made about it), The Beagle, just went wrong! Not one part worked...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Give me a good reason and I will consider space flight
Slashdotters don't weigh as much in space.
The article didn't seem to have a link to the actual report, and judging by the comments I've seen so far, nobody here's read it yet. The RAS's report can be found here:
t &task=view&id=847&Itemid=1
http://www.ras.org.uk/index.php?option=com_conten
Here's a portion of the summary....
The main conclusions of the RAS report are as follows:
* The essential scientific case for Human Space Exploration is based on investigations on the Moon and Mars. There are three key scientific challenges where direct human involvement will be necessary for a timely and successful outcome:
- Mapping the history of the solar system (including the young Earth) and the evolution of our Sun by studying the unique signatures left on and beneath the lunar surface;
- The search for life on Mars;
- Detailed, planet-wide exploration of Mars.
* Scientific missions to the Moon and Mars will address questions of profound interest to the human race. These include: the origins and history of the solar system; whether life is unique to Earth; and how life on Earth began. If our close neighbour, Mars, is found to be devoid of life, important lessons may be learned regarding the future of our own planet.
* While the exploration of the Moon and Mars can and is being addressed by unmanned missions, the capabilities of robotic spacecraft will fall well short of those of human explorers for the foreseeable future.
* Assuming a human presence, the Moon offers an excellent site for astronomy, with the far-side and polar regions of the Moon being shielded from the 'pollution' from Earth.
* Medical science will benefit from studying the human physiological response to low and zero gravity, to the effects of radiation and in the psychological challenge posed by a long-duration mission to Mars.
* There appear to be no fundamental technological barriers to sending humans to the Moon or Mars.
* A major international human space exploration programme involving a return to the Moon and the longer term aim of sending humans to Mars is likely to involve the US, Europe, Russia and Japan. There are also growing ambitions in China and India. Under present government policy the UK would not be involved and would look increasingly isolated.
* The cost of the UK playing a full role in an international human space exploration programme to explore the Moon and Mars could be of the order £150M per year, sustained over 20-25 years. It is not realistic for the bulk of this to be taken from the existing Government-funded science budget. Rather, a decision to be involved should be taken on the basis of broader strategic reasoning that would include commercial, educational, social, and political arguments as well as the scientific returns that would follow.
* There is compelling evidence that the outreach potential for human space exploration can be a strong positive influence on the interests and educational choices of children.
* Involvement in technologically advanced exploration of the solar system will provide a high profile challenge for UK industry, with consequent benefits in recruitment of new engineers and scientists. Evidence from NASA and ESA surveys have shown a significant economic multiplier from investment in space projects, with an additional overall gain in competitiveness.
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!
I'm pretty sure you've got that backward. France had previously sold Exocet to Argentina, when the war broke out they provided us with inteligence to help sabotage them - see this artical: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2002%2F03%2F13%2Fnot13.xml
Given that this can't have helped France's reputation as an arms manufacturer, we owe them a large favour.
This sig all sigs devours
Not only can you have tea, but you can drink (eat?) it with chopsticks!
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
The comparison with shuttle IS fair, because its 60 tons to orbit is not really useful payload. True, its a life support system, but its also a crew return mechanism with features that aren't useful at all in orbit. Why count the landing gear or wings of the shuttle as payload to orbit? The new strategy is to significantly reduce the mass of the return mechanism in exchange for payload that doesnt need to be returned to earth.
The side-mount launch configuration of the shuttle IS the least safe feature of the system. Columbia is a direct result of that configuration, and its debatable if Challenger would have resulted in a loss of crew if they were being launched on an in-line system.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright