Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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
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.
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