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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?
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?
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.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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.
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
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.
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.
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