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iPod Generation Indifferent to Space Exploration
An anonymous reader writes "CNN tells us that today's young adults are no longer excited at the possibility of space exploration: 'The 2004 and 2006 surveys by Dittmar Associates Inc. revealed high levels of indifference among 18- to 25-year-olds toward manned trips to the moon and Mars. The space shuttle program is slated to end in 2010 after construction of the international space station is completed with 13 more shuttle flights. The recent 13-day mission by Discovery's seven astronauts was part of that long-running construction job.' As a result, NASA's budget will include a greater amount of public relations spending."
I think that I am in the Space Exploration generation, and I am indifferent to iPods.
They'll care about it when it's practical for some of them to take a trip into space or to the Moon.
Youth, by nature, tends to be more shortsighted than mature adults. We'll also likely see a change as that generation ages.
You mean "everything" I can agree.
Fewer and fewer people believe in aliens, at least within a reasonable distance from ourselves. The more we learn about space, the more we realise that it is extremely empty and boring.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
There is no such thing as the "iPod Generation". Do not go and make up a name for that group just because you need to use the word iPod a certain number of times per day on the front page.
I certainly couldn't care less about space exploration (and I'm just barely outside of that demographic. I always thought it was a waste of time and energy to do a manned Mars exploration. Let's get the moon and space station finished first -- we've already started afterall.
After that, end the programs and use the money right here.
"iPod generation"? WTF? How is that name relevant to...well, anything?
Anyway, I'm in that age range. I can tell you that space exploration is as exciting as it ever was, but I'm indifferent (or, rather, have negative feelings) towards NASA doing it. Wasting all kinds of money on projects that are either never finished or are spectacular failures that could be used for more useful things.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
I'm 20 years old and nothing excites me more about the near future than space exploration. The idea that in my lifetime we will likely have a moon base, or go to Mars is hard to believe.
;-)
Then again, I read Slashdot, so I may not represent my demographic.
I installed Linux on a car, but it crashed due to bad drivers...
Since when does "young generation = iPod generation" these days? I saw a few shots from the space station where some of the astronauts had iPods on Velcro. I think it would be fair to say that the "video game generation" has a lack of interest in space. I blame William Shatner for that one. In a video clip for an old Star Trek game, he announced to a group of Starfleet cadets: "Space is boring."
They don't care because it's been a while since NASA has really done anything interesting. It's tough to get excited about space exploration when it's a handful of people riding up and down in a vehicle that's older than most young people's cars, and doing incomprehensible/boring stuff when they get there.
Space exploration was exciting when it meant putting people on the moon; the public has lost interest when it just means sending people up to LEO over and over again, and the people in question aren't them.
I suspect that if we put a person on Mars, you would see an immediate renewed interest in space exploration. But seeing the state to which NASA and the government in general has fallen, I suspect most young people are (wisely) too cynical to believe that will ever occur. Thus they don't care, and turn their attentions to things that seem to be actually progressing.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
These 18-26 year-olds might have different opinions in 10-20 years. Until then, their opinions don't matter. Why? They're not politically involved when compared to older demographics. But NASA is smart in trying to preempt future apathy.
Besides, not enough Americans care about taxes and program funding for this to matter. As long as politicians want huge NASA contracts going to their district/state, NASA will have funding. Whether or not this funding is merited is a different story...
We're running out of oil, faced with the probability of using ever-more CO2-generating coal to fuel our civilization, and we're (the "we" being "anybody who's paying attention") supposed to be excited about sending astronauts into orbit to solve exactly none of these potentially life-threatening problems? I'd call that a good thing. I'd call that knowing your priorities.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Given the problems that we face right now, unemployment, starvation, wars, the environment.. Why again should anyone care if we can explore space when we can't clean up our own act?
OK, so the iPod came out in 2001...it's now 2006/2007...so the iPod generation can only contain people who are five or six years old
DAMN those pre-schoolers! Wrecking space exploration...next thing you know, they'll want to exclude people with "cooties" from playing with their toys.
TDz.
Patrick Stewart? David Duchovny? Unless they fly on the shuttle or in the ISS, they won't have any effect.
Kids aren't interested in space because nothing new has happened except a disaster and a "space station" in the last 20 years. They aren't excited because NASA isn't going out of its way to make us believe that one day they will be able to travel to space. Unless, of course, they get a PhD. by the time they're 25, in perfect health, and a model citizen.
If they really want to ignite interest, let regular folk go to space. For the last 50 years, only the most perfect people have been given the chance to go. It's our turn...
We have all seen Independence Day on repeat on TBS like eleventy billion times, so there's no need to worry about finding intelligent life. It finds us, duh!
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
To the fact that most kids these days are clued up to the vastness/emptyness of space, the barreness of Mars and the Moon and the difficulties of actually getting anywhere, nevermind finding and colonizing other planets. A trip to Mars or the Moon then seems like an utterly insignificant step towards the space exploration and technology they see in the movies etc. They know it has to be done but the cool stuff comes much much later and most likely not in their lifetime.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I think it is a matter of seeing the point. With no national rallying cry and the "mundane" nature of what we've seen in our lifetimes (as well as Challenger/Columbia), the return is difficult to easily see. I think we've also been desensitized by science fiction: we want our warp drive, we want our FTL drives, and we surely want Adama to jump the ship straight into the atmosphere. Silly relativity screws everything up...
After Apollo 11 landed on the moon and the US beat the Russians to it no one cared about what NASA didi after that. No one was interested in space exploration in the first place, it was all about beating the Russians.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
not because it is interesting...
...land an iPod on Mars.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
Because Aliens are busy sitting at home experiencing virtual realities. Once computer simulations reach a certain point, you can create a universe bigger and more entertaining than the real one.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Why are people increasingly disaffected with space exploration? Well, aside from general apathy -- I mean, come on, it's 18-25 year olds, the most apathetic (is that a word?) age -- most of us are "meh" about space because we highly doubt FTL travel will ever actually occur. The planets in our solar system are extremely distant and inhospitable, and terraforming another planet like Mars or Venus is also highly unlikely.
The "exploration" aspect of space is basically gone; we've been pretty much as far as we can feasibly go. It's not a frontier anymore, and it won't be until some future Columbus makes it to another star system and brings a few natives back.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
The 18-to-25s that aren't showing any interest, well, there's a good reason.
For most of their active life, as far as they were concerned, space flight is an everyday occurance.
They grew up with the Space Shuttle. They grew up with space stations. Exploration is practically common (face it, with the Mars rovers since the mid-90's...). So is it any surprise that manned exploration would get a yawn?
This happened in the 70's. I believe by Apollo 13, no one watched space launches on TV anymore (if the networks would even carry it) nor did the public actually care (until the tank exploded).
For those who grew up in the 70's, well, spaceflight was a mystical thing. These feelings probably stayed. It's basically assumed that spaceflight is a boring reality these days.
Go back a few years, say around the time I was born, and yes, you'd probably find more excitement about spaceflight (hell, I'd love to go).
Take aviation - nobody thinks much about hopping on a plane (other than the PITA that is security nowadays and long lineups) to go somewhere. Go back to the 1950s when travelling by commercial jet was fairly novel. Now, well, it's just another form of travel. The same thing is happening to spaceflight. The novelty has worn off on this "generation" - they grew up with it, and probably assume it's always been the case.
Really, who cares about what 18 - 25 year olds from Houston think? If it doesn't roll on dubs or get dropped when it's hot, most of them will not find it interesting enough to pay attention to. We don't need them anyway, get the smokers to pay for it - they already pay for roads, why not space flight as well?
...the iPod generation seems indifferent to science and engineering in general, and seems more interested in applied technology.
I'm within the age-group that they specified, but I enjoyed building Tesla Coils, playing with all kinds of electrical and electronic equipment, pyrotechnics and the like.
These days, a lot of kids in my age group aren't particularly motivated towards building anything.
They'd much do things on the computer. Hell, most of them do not even consider Lego Mindstorms to be vaguely interesting.
Then again, I bet every generation feels this way about the newer generation. Who knows?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We don't call the 60s kids the sex without condoms generation! I resent the ipod designation.
The ISS and the shuttle are duds! What are these 13 missions for? What does the ISS do other than take up space? The hubble is worth more to science than the balance of the program. Lets get back to actual exploration and stop beating these dead horse programs and maybe the idiot youth will wake up.
This is the same demographic who speaks loudly against government yet fails to do the one thing to fix it, vote. Time and again this demographic fails to turn out at the polls despite their intense displeasure of the way things are going. This is the smae generation who has grown up with instaneous gratification and it shows in their demeanor. Fuck 'em I say. They don't want to be a reasonable functioning member of society, then I don't want them deciding things like this for me or my kids.
Of course they're not interested in space exploration - the special effects just aren't there. Most aspects of space-flight are pretty boring to watch (with the minor exception of the shuttle launches), and any time something cool looking happens, someone dies. Now, if we weaponized the shuttle and started vaporizing orbiting debris with a laser cannon, THAT would get some interest.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
As someone who falls in this particular age range (and who incidentally owns an iPod, not as if that particular fact is important or anything), this is a load of crap. I'm also disappointed in many of the comments on here slagging everyone in this age range. I'm personally excited about space exploration -- the possibility of new developments, making scientific progress and even just the sheer beauty of outer space commands excitement. I also know that I'm not alone; many of the "kids" my age that I associate with feel exactly the same way. Are we in the majority for our age group? Maybe not -- but when has the majority of anyone ever really cared about and loved space exploration unless something particularly exciting was going on?
We've been hearing for most of our lives that "we're going back to the moon" or "we're going to Mars" but nothing ever happens. I don't think anyone believes this time will be any different. We'll spend billions of dollars and get an updated version of Apollo that goes to the ISS, if it ever actually goes anywhere.
When did the US Government ever care about what 18 to 25 year olds thought about anything?
Sci-fi set unrealistic expectations. Current technology can barely get us to the moon, it might get us to Mars in several months if nothing at all goes wrong, and when we get there, there's very little we can do of consequence other than bang on rocks and report back how sparkly the insides are.
This is a far cry from warping halfway across the galaxy to save the universe from a universe-threatening quantum disturbance with no particular relationship to reality.
As our capabilities grow, as they will, it might get more exciting again. For instance, even if we never get a space elevator, it is still theoretically possible to have a space age with rockets; it's "just" a matter of getting enough energy, cheaply enough, with fusion.
But until then, it's become clear to anybody who can think (and that's more people than the sometimes-somewhat-elitist Slashdot crowd will credit) that nothing terribly interesting is going to happen anytime soon in the space industry.
Young adults don't care about anything, so an article about them not caring about _____ is redundant.
Space is big, mostly empty, expensive, and dangerous. So people know about space they just have no reason to care about it.
NASA has also had some *ahem* issues with spending money in smart ways instead of just acting as a funnel to the pockets of friends of government.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Democracy is a fine device for trending national policy decisions towards what people really want. In this case, for this age group, it seems that most people want to sit around playing the PS3 all day, and they really don't care about much else. Electronic games are the new religion of our age. Sad as hell.
Fortunately, the US is not a democracy.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
It's fucking insulting. I don't have an iPod, and I fucking hate the iPod. And regarding space exploration: show us something new instead of reporting "OMGWTFLOLBBQ there may or may not be water on Mars!!one" every two minutes, and you may have us interested.
Cue all the young people protesting that they are very interested in space exploration. Perhaps you're not representative of the population as a whole.
as an "18 to 25 year old" i find it strange that we know more about space than we do our oceans.
some of the weird creatures at the bottom of the ocean seem far more weird than any E.T.
i say forget space, focus on the sea first.
Contrast the different way that the media shows space exploration today from the 60's when man first walked on the moon, and it becomes clear that, much less emphasis is being placed upon space exploration, and more on self consuming intercenal feuding on a global scale. The space shuttle launch and construction mission received a total of 171 hours of programming while the war in Iraq 2416 hours over all of the cable and broadcast channels in the US and UK during the same time frame. Youth of today have a cynical view of space exploration since NASA makes a space career goal seem unatainable by mere mortals. If space access were more affordable and privitized, there would be a greater degree of anticipation for young and old alike. During the 60's, people watched with anticipation as man touched the moon, but groaned with malaise when faced with the bill. It is no different today, hence while Russia launches regular missions for support of the space station on a shoetring budget, the USA is forced to pay billions a pop to accomplish similar things. Space Ship One was an admirable attempt to break through the ceiling that NASA created, but without better support, they may go the way of any private space effort that has attempted to butt heads with government oversight.
Thus, if you want to see cheap access to space, and you don't like the image of young people rolling thier eyes at the accomplishements of space exploration, then you better get off your can and support private space enterprises.
Fast machines, powerfull AI, impulsive invention,... All I lack is a good espresso machine!
Put Steve Jobs in charge of NASA.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
Honestly, from the view of anyone under the age of 30 (or so) there is a different expectation on the rate of progress than the generations that came before them.
...
For people who were growing up in the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's the world was changing at a rapid rate and people were expecting that the investment in Space Exploration would have pay-offs in their lifetime. People who were raised in the 80's (and I suspect the 90's) look at the world as being far more stable because most of the advancement has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. To a certain extent, older people expect science fiction levels of space travel in the next century, whereas people under 30 see it in the distant future.
That's just my theory of course
As a person who is now 40 years old and grew up in the New York area, when I was young here are the things we found inspirational about science:
1. The Concorde
2. Star Trek
3. The World Trade Towers
4. The Space Shuttle (a little later)
Now 30ish years later:
1. Concorde retired without a replacement
2. No Star Trek
3. No World Trade Towers
4. Space Shuttle limping along and about to be retired without an obvious replacement
5. To be fair, we had Battlestar Galactica both times, and now people pay me to play with computers all day long.
So you tell me exactly what young people have got for inspriation in science these days? Personally I think that space based science fiction is such an important inspiration that if there isn't enough of it on TV the government should seriously consider grants to encourage it.
We have long had the technology to build a base on the moon. Do you know how much easier and cheaper launching exploration vehicles, both manned and unmanned from the moon would be rather than from earth? I know the DISTANCE isn't that big of a change, but the GRAVITY is a massive change, it would take exponentially less energy (read: fuel) to launch from the moon...Not to mention the observatories and labs that could be set up...after all, what better place to research low-gravity technology than in *gasp* LOW GRAVITY
The probelm is funding. The feds don't want to put any money into space. If we took the budget we have put into the Iraq war 8 years ago, a moon base would already be under construction and ready to be completed in 5-10 years. Like I said, the technology has been around. The FUNDING has not.
I know why people nowadays don't care. Alot of people feel we won't do anything of great percieved importance in our lifetime as of right now, but hey you gotta start the advancement of the race some time. Why not now? When else in history have we had the opportunity to? We have the technology, the money is in circulation, and we have the motivation (survival).
Why the hell are we being so stupid as to throw away such an opportunity?
Living With a Nerd
WTF is up with slashdot (or submitter) calling 18-15 year olds the iPod generation, and wtf is up with CNN saying 'the web generation'? Both are stupid, and imply incorrect things. The implication seems to be that the iPod or the web destroyed interest in the space program. I may be out of that age range, but I can imagine if I were in an age group identified by the web or, even worse, a particular company's product, I'd be offended.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
All generations are pretty non-plussed over NASA op right now and will likely continue that trend until they manage to do something more exciting that what we already accomplished in the 50's and 60's!
Laborare Est Orare
So can anyone tell me, what, if any real and important science is taking place on our beloved space station? And please don't tell me 'research on long term effects of zero-G'. We're only confirming finding from 20 years ago.
Absolutely nothing interesting has happened in the manned space program since we first repaired Hubble in orbit. Since then we've done nada, nothing, zilch, zero, bupkiss of interest to much of anyone, be they John Q iPod, or a PhD in astrophysics.
The manned space program has become utterly irrelevant. NASA can spend as much money as they want trying to get people excited about 'crystals' grown in microgravity, but we have heard it all before.
Do something new and different. Send people someplace they haven't been before. Or maybe let's get people living, I mean really living, on the moon. It is not impossible with today's technology. It just takes more imagination and political will than NASA currently possesses.
> The 2004 and 2006 surveys by Dittmar Associates Inc. revealed high levels of indifference among 18- to
> 25-year-olds toward manned trips to the moon and Mars.
Erm, that's it? that's all we get?
How big was the sample? how were they chosen? was it ten people chosen from a Big Brother audience? what questions were they asked? how exactly do you decide what "indifference" is?
What a complete load of tosh. An utterly unsubstaniated story.
"Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such as podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, like actors David Duchovny ("X-Files") and Patrick Stewart ("Star Trek: The Next Generation")..."
As one of the younger gen-xers (I'm 30) Patrick Stewart and David Duchovny are still kinda cool, but if you're trying to reach someone ten years younger, why not use someone from a TV-show that aired in this millenium?
Also, the kid at the end of the article who became convinced that the moon landing was a hoax based upon a single YouTube video is really depressing.
Unfortunately no one who shakes things up will ever run any government agency :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's hard to care when the only means of access is limited to big government. Space exploration is exciting, but the complex bureacracy required to pull it off isn't. A few thousand more incremental improvements in technology to bring space into private enterprise is required.
The reason "young people" are no longer excited about space exploration is that it is no longer exciting. Space has become a fairly routine and known thing where human interaction is concerned. Space exploration into the unknown frontier is conducted by machines not over weeks or months, but many many years. Any chance of sending Man beyond the Moon is many years away, if ever. It's just not that thrilling to sit around and wait.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
...Reinstate the draft.
rj
NASA to me is about:
An endless supply of space images that look like someone passed a few blur filters over a fractal image. They are all really the same, and you can't really see anything for the most part. If you've seen one star cluster with a bit of purple gas, you've seen them all really.
2 second video clips of someone's hands infront of some pole, or clunky machine with a black backdrop.
Ugly people floating around in small spaces.
It's not really something that gets to be interesting unless you are directly involved in it, and there is no immediate payoff to being in space. It's just a big empty space. Our space technology is the equivalent of rubbing two sticks together to make fire. We can't even leave our own front yard yet. We've been going up and down the driveway for the past 30 years, and wondering what the other houses on the street are like. In 30 years, we'll probably still be doing the same thing.
...I can say that in my school, I have certainly observed a great deal of student apathy regarding just about everything that has to do with science. It's really a sad thing, because I suspect that this is largely due to our incredibly weak science department. The teachers are terrible. Either you're stuck with the stereotypical monotonous robot of an educator, spewing out terms and expecting the class to understand, or you've got some bipolar nutcase who is certain that we're all gonna die due to global warming. Although my current grade in my BSCS class isn't exactly stellar (79 average), out of all the students in my class I'm still probably the most interested in the subject. This, I would imagine, is because the school system hasn't beaten out my extreme curiosity which I have kept with me all my life. Every night, my dad would read to me from one of his favorite science fiction novels (Ender's game is one that I remember best). I would soak up programs on channels such as the Discovery Science Channel every chance that I got (I still do). And to top it all off, my father and I would frequently discuss the prospects and benefits of space exploration. This is what impacted me the most. Out of all my schooling, it was the extracurricular exploration and stimulation that made all the difference to me. I'm really lucky to have two great parents. I'd say that 40-50% of all the kids I know have parents who are divorced. More still have irresponsible parents to begin with. It's sad, but true.
Oh, I guess that the fact that I was homeschooled from grades 2 to 8 made a big difference aswell.
Where did they get that data from? I am 25 and Very excited about space and space exploration. If my math skills were better I would have taken physics and astronomy as my major in college.
So you don't mind if I come and take your TV away.
Since most of the programming is bounced off of satellites.
I does not have to look far to see so many more things you would miss.
Don't wight off NASA until you understand what you are giving up.
And I am skipping over the satellite data colection that monitors our
weather and tell us about problems like the effects of CO2 and coal burning.
And I'm not surprised. The members of our generation (in their teens in the 60s, I guess) who were interested in space flight were not exactly your average passive consumer. My brother worked for NASA, and I did work on, among other things, rad-hard real time computers. When I was an undergraduate at a university not far from Ely, your audio system did not count unless you had built it yourself, from components, and by components I mean tubes, transistors, and for real kudos turn your own vinyl turntable out of an alumin(i)um blank.
Nowadays our modern equivalent, when it isn't doing the same kind of thing, is writing its own audio decoders.
The difference between then and now is quite simple. There is a lot more rubbish about. The size of the recording industry was not so bloated in the sixties and the bandwidth was much smaller. People built their own turntables, for the most part, to listen to Mozart and Wagner and (Richard) Strauss and perhaps Berio and Ligeti as I recall, not pop music which was beneath contempt; it was, after all, the product of multiple remixings from tape and there was no depth to bring out. Now, the record industry is trying to extend copyright still further on stuff with a shelf life of hours, and this is, for the most part, what will get loaded into iPods.
My conclusion? The Space Exploration generation and the iPod generation are probably practically disjoint sets. Sheep and goats, in fact. Nothing to see here; move along.
Pining for the fjords
The people in charge of it have no vision or "true" ambition to actually do anything. Yeah Bush said he wants to go to the moon and mars....instead of being inspiring like Kennedy's speech, it was just empty PR rhetoric. I feel the leaders don't care, therefore any "promises" they make won't ever come true, so why get excited about it?
If we aren't even done building the space station but already have plans to abandon it for a mars mission....how long until we abandon that for something else? Of course NASA doesn't have the money to do these ambitious missions either....so just piling on this PR crap without giving money tells me it won't happen.
I'm more excited about private space exploration because I feel they will actually get something done.
Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA's new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.
Good: sending astronauts to the moon or to Mars is a waste of money. What we should be doing is sending out a lot more robotic probes. If we don't waste our money on sending meatbags to Mars, we could have planetary rovers on every major solar system body within the next three decades, and we could have several interstellar spacecraft on their way by the end of the century. The data and images those probes would send back is what's exciting.
Am I the only one bothered by the report at the end of the article saying that a fresman in engineering can't immediately see through all that moon hoax nonsense? It's not enough that some 19-25 year-olds today lack the ambition to go to the Moon and Mars; they also seem to lack the brains. Any so-called engineer would believes the moon hoax garbage wouldn't last half a day working for me.
they don't care about it because they can't take a trip into space or to the Moon. They've grown up knowing that we went to the moon all the way back when the Beatles were considered radical and offensive, and their entire lives have been filled with documentary video of trips through galaxies and universes and time and space, full of aliens and lasers and faster-than-light travel. Yes, this video evidence is fictional, but it doesn't change the fact that they've experienced such things.
So knowing that we already landed people on the moon when their parents were kids (before, for example, the invention of the microcomputer, the cell phone, the CD player, the video game, or anything else they see as modern) and that they've spent their whole lives thinking of space as an exciting wild west of oddball physics and rowdy extraterrestrials, it's no wonder that a couple of orbits of the earth, a tinfoil space station, and a few probes don't get them going.
I personally am very excited by space exploration, but also very disappointed at our unwillingness to really go after it (compare NASA's budget to the budget for the Iraq war, for example), but I can easily see how a younger person might simply feel a little "been there, done that, a hundred years ago" about the whole thing.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Require Science Fiction reading in HS...lots of it.
I hate to say it, but even someone born in 1973 like myself has lost interest in space exploration. It sure seemed cool when I was growing up, but my interests these days lay more in discovery of large scale social interaction... stuff that wasn't possible back then, and further understanding of the human mind and body. I still appreciate that people are doing pure science and I wouldn't want that to stop. But I've become more realistic -- and getting off this planet just doesn't make sense to me any more. The advantages are... what? I'd much rather see how to build a better human society in this stellar garden of eden we've already got than to figure out how to live in a theme park on Mars.
Cheers.
I see a lot of posts about how we have far more important things to worry about than space exploration - wars, poverty, famine, global warming, disease - and that we should ignore space and fix these problems first. I've got bad news for you folk - they ain't gonna get fixed if we drop the space program.
Now, being an ex-NASA guy, I feel fully justified in saying that the Administration is not a bastion of efficiency or efficient use of science dollars for science sake. Manned spaceflight will probably never be as cost effective as robotic exploration or remote sensing. Still, it can be a very valuable resource for the inspiration of younger generations to go into science and engineering. Both of those fields are critical to advancement against the world's ills of poverty, famine, globla warming, and disease. Since science doesn't pay as well as non-productive professions like accountancy, law, and real estate sales, we need some way to inspire the next generation to do something other than make enough disposable income to buy the latest iPod. NASA fuels both interest and the work they do has far reaching impact for science (and not just pens that write upside down and expensive mattresses).
What we do need is a real mission and real results. Without that, the popultation is going to see NASA for what it currently is: a rudderless agency spending lots of money to do very little real science. Sadly, with the pork included in its budget, NASA will never garner the excitement and focus it has had in the past. Plus with the contractor mentality it will never have the in-house expertise keep and propogate the corporate knowledge that allows for efficent and consistent advances in aeronautic science.
Right now the NASA beurocracy and the year-to-year funding methodology by congress has doomed the agency to its current fate - mundane and uninspired. I would love to see a rebirth of the agency, but I'm not holding my breath.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Please don't call it the Ipod generation. Aren't they actualy called generation "Y"?
-makoffee
They don't care because it's been a while since NASA has really done anything interesting.
Nothing exciting, that is, except for lots of probes to Mars, Titan, and other bodies, probes that have fundame tally changed out view of the solar system and send back stunning pictures.
It's tough to get excited about space exploration when it's a handful of people riding up and down in a vehicle that's older than most young people's cars,
Indeed, the space station and manned space flight is a waste of money and horribly boring. That's why NASA should focus on robotic space exploration.
But seeing the state to which NASA and the government in general has fallen, I suspect most young people are (wisely) too cynical to believe that will ever occur.
The reason why manned space exploration isn't happening is because it's enormously hard and largely useless: for the cost of a single manned mission to Mars, we can send dozens of robotic probes to every planet and major moon, and get orders of magnitude more scientific data.
Send people someplace they haven't been before.
You're right! THE SUN! I would PAY to watch that!
See 12 astronauts fight for a place on the 3 man escape pod, and watch as the remainder are vaporised in the sun's corona!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If you compare our rather lower risk missions of the 90s/00s to the rather high risk missions of the 60s/70s, it's no surprise that it's less interesting.
Also, I believe the image of NASA has changed from that of a cutting edge government sponsored organization to a lumbering money pit. We really need to "fight" someone if we want public support... even if it's more PR than anything.
This is because we are not exploring. We are just dinking around. The government needs to open up space to entrepeneurs. When private industry takes it upon themselves to tackle an asteroid and mine it for all of the free-to-be-had minerals, then we will see excitement. The earth economy will boom like nothing we have ever seen when industries explode with all of the jobs created by companies trying to be the first to get to Near Earth Object X and making it a new country, where all operations based there would be tax-free. Astronaut/pilot schools will flourish. A new resurgence of science studies, etc. Government needs to get out of the way and provide incentives for industy to get the ball rolling.
I'm serious therefore not flame bait.
/. mod got there panties in a bunch.
I can see another
-k!
Space has nearly infinite power resources
It's upsetting that war brings out innovation
Correction. SOME wars bring out innovation. I'm not quite sure what innovation Iraq has gotten us...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The question was about manned space travel - not if this generation is interested in space travel. I am highly interested in space travel but believe we should stop all manned flights. We have the technology for computers to do everything for us, it will be safer and result in less launch delays. Dreams of a moonbase and a man on mars are a waste of NASA's paper-thin budget.
These days, to people born after the shuttles started doing missions mainly see NASA doing seemingly esoteric missions. (This is not belittling what they do, its very important to research as a whole, but to untrained people its not exciting.)
What is needed is a mission that is a morale (and funding) booster for NASA and that can be explained in short simple terms to people who have not seen much from NASA except a periodic shuttle dropping off supplies at the ISS. For example, A moon base showing off lots of pictures of the area. However, with the current technology we have now, NASA doesn't have any rockets powerful enough to hit the moon, so will have to reengineer something that has the 1960s kick to get men there, but with 21'st century safety. Even though its not adding significantly to research, doing something basic like high-resolution photos of the side of the moon facing away from Earth would be great PR and would get people to push for more NASA funding.
Pictures of another world taken not just from a random probe or rover, but by live people, expand the imagination and will get more people interested in the concept that space is not just a number in gigabytes marked on their iPod.
I'm definitely no longer a young adult. That aside, this sentiment is the polar opposite of my experience:
I think that younger people, myself included, would be a lot more excited by space travel if it seemed like there was some sensible, practical business thought behind it. The Mars landers of the last decade have fired up a lot of young people because the men and women behind those missions made their work very public, so we've known what they were looking for, what they actually looked at, and what they've been learning from it all. But those missions are standouts in space exploration, not the norm. Nobody seems to have a good reason for going to the Moon, other than it's a great source of pride for nationalists in the governments and media of the two interested nations, China and the United States. The same goes for Mars--we don't here scientists talking about it much, just politicians and pundits.
It doesn't help that some of us have grown up to regard NASA as a bloated bureaucratic nightmare that's either being hobbled by politicians using it for personal gain or being reigned in by politicians trying to kill off NASA's wasteful spending habits. Was the decision to sort-of-save the Hubble telescope genius or folly? Why should I waste my time sorting through the BS? The political theater that surrounded the safety investigations of the Space Shuttle program in recent years was similarly annoying, but NASA probably deserves more of the blame than the sleazy congresscritters who were making annoying speeches about it.
To make space exploration palatable the governments need to get out and let big business take over. It might take longer, but it will also cost less and provide a lot more good PR and heroes than the national space programs are now. Burt Rutan and Richard Branson have done more to excite me about space travel than anyone at NASA or any other space agency has in my entire lifetime. If the people of the United States want to see a new age of exploration, lets give massive tax breaks to companies that want to do the work and then get the politics the hell out of the way.
I wasn't the one who modded you flamebait, but I do disagree. I think every generation (to the extent that that term even means anything) tends
to assume the worst about the younger generations. It seems to be human nature to make disparaging generalizations about "today's youth." Having
had the misfortune to be born into "Generation X" I've really grown to resent that mentality and try to avoid it myself. Tomorrow's generation
is probably never as bad as the older folks actually think, IMO.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
wouldn't the best PR be that they actually accomplish things and then trumpet them? i find that publishing fantastic pictures of the hubble telescope is better PR than paying some marketing droid multi millions to come up with some predictably lame advertising campaign. i hope they don't go for useless PR like that sad debacle where bush paid lip service to sending people to mars and NASA jumped up and down trying to get people excited for what was obviously a pipe dream, that actually helped to highlight how impotent and backwards our space programs are when all the limitations were outlined.
if they actually accomplished something rather than getting 40% of the way done and then cut funding my demography would be more excited in the area. I personally think the government is too slow for most peoples attention span. If anything exciting happened soon, it won't be from NASA it will be from a privately funded company.
I think part of the issue, assuming (and that is a big assumption) that is is correct for now,is that for all the media that we all consume, what we see on TV is more exciting than the current space program. When you have an expectation of new stuff coming out all the time, its hard not to develop A.D.D. like a feret on espesso.
Internet == Fast, fast trends, constantly appeasing the mob with new trend du jour sponsored by a corporate entity, with some star power as its face
Media == with all the sci-fi shows, you almost get a "been there, done that attitude" even if its not real and made up
NASA == Slow, methodical, underfunded, slow progress. Doesn't fit with the 5 second trend.
Basically, if NASA could offer trips to the moon/mars right now like a amusment park ride, it would be different.
My 0.02
Sure, there are social benfits to space exloration, but maybe people just want thier tax dollars to go towards fixing the problems we have here on earth now. Leave space for private companies for now.
If you meant that going into space is mostly for kicks and not for practical use, then you are dead wrong.
Just take a close look at what human-made equipment is out there (outside the earth's athmosphere, in deep space, on the moon, Mars or wherever), and what exactly it's doing. Then is becomes clear that exploring space has many, many practical benefits for *everybody* on this planet.
Weather prediction, monitoring land use, car navigation systems, telecommunications, new materials, keeping an eye out for km-sided meteors on a crash course with earth, scientific experiments that enable new everyday technology back on earth, etc. etc.
A hot topic right now is global climate change. Is there a problem? How big is it? What can we do about it? Satellites help us get the facts straight, and make informed decisions.
Exploring other planets or deep space is just an extension of that. I'm sure future use of space will include things like tourism, out-of-athmosphere planes, mining other planets for rare/precious materials, and so on. The more we discover, the more possibilities pop up. People who think that has no practical use, are either blind or short-sighted.
...because they've figured out that it'll all be robots going. We'll have huge telescopes with detailed maps, automated probes, supply ships going ahead, probably robots to build most of it. People... well that'll just be an "isolated life" experiment we could do in the Arctic or whereever really. Sure there's a few things we can't simulate like low-G but I figure we got full-G and zero-G, we should be able to work that out. Certainly a great technical feat but it doesn't have the cowboy appeal of exploring the great unknowns.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
We don't have a space station or moon-base, instead we kept many affluent people in well paying and safe jobs. The main factor is most political as there are no voting constituents in space, just as there's no real vision in politics today. As well, personally, I don't believe NASA or any other large organization can be assessed as competent or effective. Truly, if i did my job as well as NASA, I'd get fired. Now, if there was a real space station and we were building a functional base on the moon, interest would be huge, obviously. As for advertising? sure ... in truth, it's just funneling funds away from real development. Business as usual I see.
I think it would be a tragedy if humans stopped exploring space, but...
Is it appropriate for government agencies to conduct PR for their own pet projects or even missions?
Sure, I think it's a good cause, but should the ag department be lobbying for more food support and the EPA for more research on, say, nuclear-powered vehicles? What about if the army lobbied for support of the mounted cavalry?
Perhaps its the citizens who should set policy and the government who implements it, eh?
It isn't worth protecting. Agent Smith says it best:
I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
If you want to send people someplace they haven't been before, or establish a permanent manned presence on the Moon, you need technology that is more durable and reliable than what we have now. And that is exactly the kind of technology that is being developed for and tested on the ISS. It's not exciting work, but it has to be done. It's absolutely crucial for the next phase of manned space exploration.
Apollo was designed and built under the pressure of a race to the Moon. As such it took liberties and employed shortcuts that are not acceptable now, especially since NASA is under increased scrutiny over safety. Apollo used technology that was very expensive, had a limited shelf life, relied on consumable resources, and ignored certain problems such as periodic solar radiation. These are perfectly defensible design choices for short-term scouting missions. Cutting those corners allowed Apollo to be developed relatively quickly. But the same strategy won't work now. We need renewable resources and much longer-lived spacecraft. We need better defenses against the environmental hazards. And since it's not a race this time, we can afford to take our time and research problems deliberately.
NASA has no mandate to do fancy things every four or five years to keep the taxpayers entertained. In fact, NASA -- like any public institution -- can only spend its money on what the taxpayer-voted budget allows from year to year. And until recently the public has simply not granted funds to NASA to extend its manned programs to anything beyond the shuttle and the ISS. Unfortunately this is not a case where the public can sit idly by and wait for NASA to impress them. The way it works is that the public has to pass its pre-existing excitement on to NASA in the form of a mandate and a big check.
I've heard a few good descriptions of the current middle few generations, including "The Microwave Generation". These people want everything right the fuck now - we can't wait for anything to happen. We also want everything for free. And within moments of something new being publicized it's already old and we're looking for something new.
Space exploration is slow, old news, and to really experience it (more than pictures and videos) is definitely not free.
It's like the entire populous has become bandwagon riders. It's rare to find people that stick with a hobby for any prolong amount of time. At least five people in my office of sixty were nuts over cycling while Lance was riding in France. They all bought expensive road bikes and yellow jerseys, but as soon as Lance was done they sold all their gear and haven't ridden a bike since. Or the people who see some travel show on TV and tell me they're going to go photograph the world - then a month later they tell me they haven't turned their camera on in weeks.
I'm just a tightwad. I don't like spending money on anything (:
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
When I was a kid we went from crude rockets blowing themselves up on the pad to landing on the moon in about 10 years. Now we have desided to go back after 30 years and 40 some years of technological development and we will not get there for another 15 years.
Why would I, as a teen, be interested when I will probably be too old to participate by the time it is all ready to go.
You want to get young people intrested, stop moving at a snails pace, get back to the moon in say 3-5 years using todays technology and off the shelf parts.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
When you say 'humanity', you must be referring to all the 'unwashed masses' in the poor and dusty regions of the earth. In the developed sections, we (the women, that is) take pills that allow us to have unlimited sex without wanton reproduction. We tend to be very careful about creating more children than we can afford to take care of (and that our environment can support).
It is the dirt poor humans, those still controlled by narrow-minded males obsessed with religious superstition, that multiply until every natural resource is consumed. Pay less attention to Palestine and Yemen and more to Italy and Japan and you will see that this is true.
I don't find this surprising at all. It's the natural result of two things: telling people that the universe has been completely figured out, and telling people what we found is that our immediate surroundings are more-or-less benign and unrelated to the happenings in deeper space.
Both of these assertions are unwarranted, and yet, you get those two messages loud and clear even here on these Slashdot forums from very educated people. It's amazing, but people are so confident in their models for how the universe works. This is in spite of the fact that we have yet to directly observe many of the key features of our theories like gravitationally collapsing nebulas, neutron stars, dark matter or dark energy; in spite of the fact that astronomy is not like the other sciences in that we cannot perform traditional input-output experiments; and in spite of the fact that other theories exist to explain all of our observations. It's my conviction that it is impossible to have absolute certainty about things like cosmology, and that anybody who proposes that things like the Big Bang are without a doubt true because the math works or for any other reason, are offering certainty in a field where uncertainty can never completely be eliminated.
The current paradigms also assert that all of the bodies in space are disconnected and unrelated to one another in any significant way because it is assumed that gravity is the most dominant force in the universe. This is in spite of the fact that the field of plasma physics has significantly matured recently, and astrophysics has been slow to integrate Hannes Alfvene's (as well as others') contributions. We now know that space is filled with charged particles that can conduct electricity over even diffuse plasmas over great distances. We can observe massive magnetic fields in space with our telescopes, and these magnetic fields would require large sustained electrical currents in order to exist. Much of the high-temperature radiation we observe in space these days possesses synchrotron components, which is a clear signal that electricity is a cause.
Because of this context, when we see daily news of massive ice sheets breaking off, we *assume* that it *must* be the result of human activity instead of the space that we live within. When we see high temperatures on Venus, we ignore the fact that *all* literate human cultures note that Venus once did not exist within recent human history. We *assume* that we are so much smarter than them and that they must *all* be wrong, even though they all say the exact same thing. And when our probe sensors return data that indicate that the hot temperatures of Venus are originating from the planet itself, we conclude that those sensors must be faulty because they do not conform to our simplified runaway greenhouse models. When we observe that the Sun's brightness and Neptune's brightness, for instance, are increasing in ways that don't make sense with the traditional models, we ignore them even though that's a clear suggestion that there is external input to those bodies. There appears to in fact be little that can convince us that the plasma that surrounds us in space actually *does* anything even though we can determine in laboratories that this is not true and in computer simulations that it alone can explain the rotational properties of spiral galaxies. We'd rather believe in things like dark matter rather than a suggestion that charge can flow over diffuse plasma in space.
The apathy amongst our kids is not a random result. It's the result of telling them to *listen* instead of telling them to *think* and *imagine*. We've basically convinced them that the universe that they'll have access to is boring and that the only interesting stuff happening that they'll ever come close to even touching is here on the surface of Earth -- and we've done this in order to satisfy our own desires to feel *certain* about our surroundings in space.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
...and I'm all for space exploration. I just think that manned space flight seems dangerous, expensive, and useless.
It's just a more polite version of "Generation Why?" (pun on the successors to "Generation X", on the off chance someone has never heard this).
:P
Your post also sums up where the less polite version came from in the first place
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
then the human race deserves to die off
I could have posted your entire paragraph back in the late 80s, other than the homeschooling bit.
Plus ca change...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Want to make "Space" exciting?
Put the military up there. We already give the military billions of dollars, they could wrangle it out internally.
Imagine the bump in recruiting if the Military was a real vector to spaceflight?
Our government needs to throw-away the baby-steps, like the ISS trailer-park, and set to creating large durable protective long-term space habitats.
The United States needs to park their butts at a LaGrange point, run up a flag, and set up camp.
The two careerist services (Airforce and Navy) could push every damn envelope NASA has ever wanted to.
NASA/private space-interests would gain skilled people once these military personal leave active service.
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
I would guess that the "ipod generation" (dumb name, BTW) isn't indifferent to space development, just NASA's extremely poor PR. The younger folks out there seem interested in space, human or robotic exploration, space tourism, astronomy, all sorts of stuff. It's NASA's marketing and the pitiful plan they've put forward that fall flat. People are excited about space, just not NASA space. Private spaceflight excites almost everyone I talk with, it's the ability to go there yourself that people are interested, not 4 government employees sometime in the next several decades. You should have seen all the excited young people at the X Prize Cup - and very little of that excitement is about the maybe-Moon missions.
Jon Goff has a good piece on Selenian Boondocks right now, called "VSE Apathy Woes". http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com/
It's not "space" that youth are apathetic over, it's NASA.
Josh
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
This reminds me of a story I was told recently at university, when one of my lecturers got a bit side tracked during an inorganic chemistry lecture.
For various reasons, the topic turned to chemistry in space where he brought up the fact that NASA had asked, completely out of the blue, the Chemistry Department for an experiment they could send up on the space shuttle. The department found this a little strange, seeing as, at the time (late eighties) nobody was researching anything that could conceivably be helped or hindered by zero gravity plus, nobody had ever contacted NASA. Given the opportunity and the tight deadline, the department quickly selected the aforementioned lecturer's group for an experiment, which at a push, gravity might have an effect on.
What did his group decide to do? Growing crystals!
A couple of weeks manic work, a flight for the whole group from the UK to US to watch the takeoff and much free food and drink later they get the results back. Unsurprisingly it didn't work, but seeing as it wasn't anybodies main line of work (and the free trip+ food+ drink) nobody was too bothered about it.
What is the moral of this story he told us? That every time you hear about crystals being grown in orbit/low gravity, think of a University Chemistry Department anywhere on the planet, contacted at random, throwing together a not-very-relevant-to-their-line-of-work experiment at short notice so they can say they did it (It is nearly always growing crystals). Think. Why did NASA do this?
The answer is simple. There is very little interesting chemistry to be or can be done in Zero G (in a space shuttle). And NASA has a budget to try and justify.
(Don't get me wrong, I'm all for science in space and a large space budget, but going about it this way is just plain wrong, if the lecturer is correct it still does.)
Cue the accusations of us "not caring about anything these days", or society going to the dogs. I'm sure people were once shocked to discover that their children no longer found electric lighting utterly fascinating. Or the wheel.
If you grow up with technology, you grow accustomed to it. If there are plenty of news stories about NASA's missions (which aren't even that exciting, currently), then they become every day occurences. It's not surprising in the slightest, but I'm sure someone wil decide that it indicates a greater level of uncaring for life itself, and that all modern kids are clinically depressed.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
What does having an iPod have to do with Space Exploration? Why is the 18 to 25 year old range considered the iPod Generation? I know lots of people out of that bracket who buy iPods.
At the end of the article, a 19 year old mentions how the moon landing was faked.
I really want to just blow up on people who that. If you actually watched that pathetic show and really believed it, that the moon landing was faked, it's an obsolute profession of your own ignorance of space, zero common sense,and inability to do any research at all.
I've gone round and round with people on this one. Simply put, there isn't a SINGLE arguement about how things where 'faked' that I could not shoot down in a matter of minutes. Anyone with any common sense and a smatter of knowledge of the subject should be able to. Some are so simple you can dis-prove the argument in your own back yard. Others take a bit more digging, but 100% of the arguements for being faked, are in fact false.
We beyond a doubt went to the moon, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to do some homework and wake up.
I'm a part of that generation and I can tell you I'm not excited. Why should I be? There hasn't been any real space travel occurring since I was born. Sure, it's cool that we've sent probes as far as we have and the recent rover missions to Mars have been cool but there isn't much about the Shuttle program or the ISS that excites or inspires me. It will be kind of cool to go back to the moon since it hasn't happened since I was born but once again it's a been there, done that, kind of deal. I can guarantee you this, if we ever attempt to send someone to Mars everyone in my generation will get excite about it. Right now it's all talk and so far out in the future that it's understandable that people in the me, me, me, now, now, now generation wouldn't get excited about it. Trust me, if we stay the course and as the time approaches people will get very excited.
Goddamn shame they weren't more sincere about backing The Cape, eh?
The stick up the ass bureaucrats who have run NASA most of the past few DECADES got themselves into this.
I m disgusted to read of the lack of interest in space issues but not surprised at all.
For years everybody from Gerard K. O'Neil to Laurie Anderson has been trying to help the fat-assed chowderheads down there to capture the public's enthusiasm and reliably as sunrise NASA fucks it up.
Thanks guys.
So much.
-Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Robotic exploration is what's killing NASA; if they don't restart manned exploratory missions, they're going to go into a death spiral
Quite to the contrary: NASA has been following the path of manned space exploration, with the space station and the space shuttle, and it has been an incredible waste of money. Furthermore, as TFA say, nobody gives a damn.
Manned space flight was a 60's obsession, some odd combination of SciFi, an aviation craze, and the cold war. People don't care anymore.
If NASA doesn't get the next generation of voters and tax-payers interested, they're going to be dead of apathy within the decade.
Yes, and they are going to "get the next generation" by continuing those kinds of missions that have generated the largest amount of interest: missions that send back high resolution imagery and permit everybody on earth to have a part in exploration. Heck, with robotic probes, we could rent out exploratory vehicles so that everybody actually has a real shot at doing something on another planet.
What does excite the, like, ipod, or whatever, generation?
word.
No sane intelligent person can get excited about NASA's pointless manned space projects. They are wasteful and amount to little more than elitist amusement park rides. Everything that is being done or planned for the shuttle or the ISS can be done more quickly, cheaply, and ambitiously with unmanned missions, except perhaps the laughable "research" on the effects of weightlessness on humans.
Unmanned missions that transmit real-time immersive experiences available to anyone with a web browser or VR interface of some kind would bring the amusement park ride to those who are paying for it. Creating a network of small unmanned stepping stone stations between the earth and the moon, perhaps in radial spoke-like groups, and sending an endless variety of robotic devices to robotic moon bases, then doing the same to Mars would be 1) vastly cheaper than doing it with manned missions, 2) would stimulate a wider base of technological innovation because a more diverse industrial base could participate, 3) would be more incomparably ambitious in terms of timelines and and pursuable science, and 4) would provide a huge amount of varied media experiences to inspire future generations.
It is extremely tiresome to read post after post implying the unquestioned truth that manned space exploration is useful, desirable, will allow us to escape cataclysm on earth, will open up a vast supply of inexpensive raw materials, uniquely expresses our innate need for exploration in a way that unmanned exploration does not, etc. These are specious claims and empty, childish beliefs. Manned space exploration today is the practice of looting the Treasury, nothing more. Please think more carefully and practically. Reality is not like science fiction. Reality must obey both the laws of physics and the constraints of economics.
Standing on a street corner, speaking out loud, but nobody is listening. Es inutil, he thought.
Sounds like kids need to start reading some Ben Bova novels.
Probably because they don't take it seriously anymore when NASA says "moon program". They been through this 3 times since 1974 already and nothing ever happened. The next moon program is going to be from China. That's a moon program they can take seriously.
the fact that people bond over music, and the iPod (or any digital music device) lends itself to that.
+++ATH0
In my equal years, even after the Apollo program, space politics and the media was outwardly focused.
I wonder what solution Al has in mind for the Sun going into it's red giant phase.
Or even if we find out we'll be clobbered by a comet in three weeks.
If human kind wants to survive, it needs space exploration followed by space settlement. Our only hope is a future generation will get interested by the idea of settlement. It won't be mind, or the IPOD's. I doubt it will be my kid's either.
As I mentioned in my post, the problem is that we no longer have a frontier -- at least, not an available one. We already know what's out there in our own solar system: we've robotically explored Mars, we've taken high-resolution pictures of the giants, we've demoted Pluto. Additionally, what we've done is pretty much all we're capable of doing, either for political, economic, or physical reasons. We're not about to leave the solar system until somebody figures out FTL travel -- assuming it's even possible which is still highly debatable. We're not about to terraform Mars because, well, it's not likely it's physically possible; and if it is, the cost would be huge.
Until what's out there becomes unknown, accessible, and just a little bit sexy-dangerous, space exploration will continue to lack that "wow" charm for that "iPod generation".
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
I work with middle-school kids. Many, if not most, of them seem to lack any imagination or curiosity - about anything. You can't really blame them - people are doing everything possible to eliminate anything remotely 'interesting' or 'different' about the world. When everywhere you go the streets are lined with Taco Bells, Pizza joints and cookie-cutter chain motels, why would anyone think there could possibly be any place more interesting than where they're at already? Hell, you can't even see a travelog on TV which shows anything but the mandatory post-card touristy views mixed with numerous hints (a.k.a. Ads) to help you find the nicest western-style hotels and eateries so you'll never run the risk of meeting the 'locals' or having to try their food or seeing how they really live.
You are the kind of guy who sits on his front porch all day yelling at kids to get off your lawn, aren't you?
...would be to develop/build a spacecraft actually worthy of the name. From what I've seen, if you can call the shuttle a spacecraft, then we can call putting one leg on either side of a log a seaworthy vessel. People will probably call me an ignorant troll for this, but many of us know about the shuttle disasters that have occurred. We ideally need a safer/more efficient form of propulsion than anything petroleum based, and IMHO if they're going to do anything, build a dock of some kind in orbit and use that as a staging area for going somewhere else, since from what I've read, most of a shuttle's fuel expenditure is purely due to needing to get out of orbit.
;)
Although the other thing is...and maybe some people will call me narrow minded for this...but I really can't see a lot of practical use for us going into space. We've already established that none of the local planets are likely to be habitable, and frankly, I can think of a whole heap of problems that we've got down here on Earth which surely should be given far higher priority than going to Mars. If dry, inhospitable red gravel is what you're craving, then come to Australia. We've got as much of it as you could possibly want.
Are you in the UK or US? Either way, good on you. The desire to learn and be fascinated by the world around (and beyond!) us, is so much more exciting than the superficial 'crap' that is fed to us on TV and in the print media today. Incidentally, if you want to take a tongue in cheek look at what could become commercial reality in the not too distant future, check out Mars Hydro, a teaser holding site I put up a while back when they first thought they had found the stuff of life on the red planet. ;-)
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
You're not alone out there. Not to blatantly slashvertise, but I can tell by what you've written that you're a potential materials scientist. Intelligent, eloquent, and disgusted with how little people have invested in you. When you reach high school you may want to take a look at the Materials Camp program. http://www.asminternational.org/Content/Navigation Menu/ASMFoundation/Materials_Camp/StudentsMaterial sCamp/CampOverview.htmASM International Materials Camp
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
I gues you've never slept on a posterpedic bed with NASA developed memory foam, HAVE YOU?
Walk with Music;
"...are there way too many stupid people in the world?"
Are you smart? Have you reproduced? Did you have more children than the average moron on welfare?
Let me know if you answer "Yes" to at least 2 of these.
"Also, I believe the image of NASA has changed from that of a cutting edge government sponsored organization to a lumbering money pit. We really need to "fight" someone if we want public support... even if it's more PR than anything."
I agree that the image of NASA has changed. I don't think I agree that we need to fight someone in order for NASA to be held in higher regard.
In the 60's it was easy to see NASA's progress, and easy to imagine it leading inexorably to the fantastical future. Now it's harder to see any progress out of NASA. And it is easy to imagine any prorgress achieved stagnating.
In the 60's our path to interstellar excitement was almost manifest destiny, but today we see that even if we do manage to make progress we might just sit back and rest on it for 20 years. A steady forward march would return some of the excitement of old.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
You are right in that it has to do with 'fantasy', but it has nothing to do with "dark Gothic horror and sex". The youth of today know that Mars is a barren and desolate wasteland that makes the most hellish inhospitable places on Earth look pleasant. The youth of today realize that Venus is not a steamy jungle teeming with life, but a hellish world where the atmosphere will rend even the most hardened probes into a pile of molten goo.
The youth of today know damn well that the chances of NASA some how blazing a trail that they can follow behind is slim to nil. Who wants to shell out piles of money so that the government can stick a dozen people on the barren vacuum of the moon or send a multi-trillion dollar spaceship to Mars to collect rock samples?
If there was a viable way to get your average Joe into space, I think people would be extremely excited. I can't speak for the rest of the world, but many Americans are frothing at the mouth for another frontier. It is almost comical to see thousands of Americans switching costs in some hopeless attempt to keep pushing forward. There is a generation of pioneers waiting for their chance. The issue is that rocket fueled spaceships are certainly not going to be the means by which they get there.
We are stuck in a gravity well and everyone realizes it. No amount of fantasy where we send a dozen people to the Moon and Mars is going to change the fact that it takes millions to get in space, and millions more to make even short stays. Perhaps when someone strings up a space elevator things will change as space is opened up to the public. Until then, the pubic is wisely covering their own asses and telling the government to fuck off with consuming their resources to dump a handful people onto barren vacuum worlds for a month or two before returning with rock samples.
Hopefully the current crop of kids recognizes that the future is about learning to live sustainably here on Earth. Until we can put proper resources here, why waste energy flying to the moon?
Be heard || Be herd
I'm a huge science fiction fan (just finished Stross' "Iron Sunrise" 5 minutes ago, in fact...), and if anything it's made me *more* indifferent towards NASA's current plans. On the one hand, most science fiction uses superadvanced technology (e.g. fusion rockets) or magic (e.g. "impulse engines") to hand-wave away the difficulties of space travel. That's fine for writing interesting stories set centuries in the future, but it's not going to give kids any real idea of the promises and problems involved with space travel today. On the other hand, there are some science fiction stories which do take a more realistic but optimistic near-term look at space travel (see Flynn's "Firestar"), but they make it pretty apparent that NASA's idea of space travel has little to do with the kind of R&D we need to begin industrializing and colonizing outer space. Building giant, throwaway, useful-for-one-mission-only rockets with armies of ground support staff might get a few astronauts back to the Moon and Mars (ooh, we'll have flags and footprints on *two* extraterrestrial bodies!), but it won't be cost-effective enough for private enterprise to be interested or for government settlements to be successful.
NASA lost my interest when they decided that their next-generation launch vehicles should be yet another series of low-flight-rate expendables (thus helping to stagnate space technology) and decided that their next-generation capsule should be too heavy for competing launchers to carry (thus helping to stagnate space industry). Theirs is not a program that's ever going to put a city on Mars or mines on the asteroids, and hardcore SF readers know it.
We need modern propaganda to fix this problem. We didn't go to the moon because the public was enthralled with the concept at day 1, the russians put a visible audible orbitng bill-board up that said "Hi, I'm better than you" and we decided we were gonna hike up our pants and beat those red bastards so hard they'd forget Iron Joe's real name.
:)
JFK got on board, movies were shown in classrooms, science reels played at movie theaters and on TV. There was a vibrant interest in space travel because there was a full court press to PUSH space travel. Then came Regan/Bush. They didn't care about travel so much - Regan wanted to put lasers up there to deal with terrestrial threats, Bush thought he was a wacko. Clinton didn't do much more.. and it's unclear what Bush II's legacy will be.
I think once the civilian space flight groups start to invest money into advertising and intrest creation things may start to turn. I'm just praying we don't end up with Moonbase Coke! and Starbase Budweiser (where everyone but the pilot is REALLY flying), and of course Port Microsoft.. but no one trusts the seucrity there.
-GiH
This is something that I care about a lot, and all I have to say is that if it matters to you, do something about it:
http://www.seds.org/ - Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
http://www.nss.org/ - National Space Society
http://www.yurisnight.net/ - Yuri's Night, the international space party
http://www.xprize.com/ -X-Prize Foundation
just to name a few...
or of course if you're young enough and willing to work a civil servants salary:
http://www.nasa.gov/about/career/index.html
-Brian
As soon as I saw that NASA is upping "advertising" to convince young people they should care, I could sense the inherent stupidity. NASA should be doing actual science with that money rather than convincing young people they should have the money in the first place, that's their job. Government agencies shouldn't need a PR campaign, if they do, they're probably doing something stupid or unnecessary. No one needs to advertise to convince me that the post office is still a good idea even after the internet and private companies have taken a lot of their pre-eminence. The real problem boils down to the breakdown in communication between large and important blocks of society. In this case, between younger people and their parents and older peers. Confusing advertising with a need to communicate your mission is the first mistake. The assumption and it's the wrong assumption is that because of the youth revolution that gave us pop culture now, the children of the baby boom and their children are rebelling and unwilling to listen and communicate. This isn't the case. I know these people and I am one of those people and we genuinely want to dialog with our parents and grandparents. We're looking for mentors and new ways to communicate with you. Please don't confuse advertised youth rebellion and something like an IPOD for indifference or unwillingness to care. This isn't the majority. Advertising is no substitute for vision, leadership and communication.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
Excuse me, but the question should be...Would you rather a nice color picture of someone else on vacation in Hawaii, or a nice color picture of Hawaii?
You see, WE don't get to go on the fancy $25 billion dollar trip to the Moon, someone else does. That's boring and uninteresting because it was already done +35 years ago. Until Joe Six-pack gets to go, it's not interesting, no matter how many neat looking rocks we collect.
Jesus H. Christ, kid, there won't be "one white guy", there will be astronauts of all races and both sexes. Where do you people come up with this utter nonsense?
That said, what the hell is the point of manned space exploration? Somebody answer me that, and I'll support it.
In the 60s it was to develop military technology and show up the Commies.
What's been the point since then? The costs of sending up people are literally astronomical. If we take the money that has gone up in smoke to put people into space and put it towards REAL science, and we could lay the groundwork for real exploration. Perhaps defining our generation by it's realist tendencies is a better delineation than ownership an overpriced radio.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
In no particular order, then, modern music didn't begin with the Beatles and Elvis. Possibly it began with Beethoven, but I can assure you that the likes of Mahler and Richard Strauss antedated the Beatles, as did 12 tone music. An awful lot of the background music you hear - on TV shows and adverts, for instance - owes more to 12 tone and atonal music than it does to the Beatles. When the Beatles brought out LPs (12 inch vinyl 33 rpm) they were following in a route well trodden by - what to call it? - non-rock music.
If your parents have a large collection of LPs and 45s collected in that era, they were in a middle class minority. In the 60s, the majority of the population got music from the radio and from juke boxes. The "ownership" of recorded music by a large section of the community is, I think you will find, a very recent phenomenon. Which is part of my point, really.
In fact, I think people's choices in music say a lot. iPods are not about quality of performance or the experience of live music. They are predominantly about background. (I know that musicians are often relatively indifferent to recording quality, but that's largely because they are listening mainly to the sounds in their heads while the recording is more like a mnemonic or audio cue.) Background music is mainly consumed; it is not critically registered. As the concept of buying music has been spread by the recording industry it has become important to democratise and even abolish taste, because if all listeners were critical the market would be much smaller (there is a limit to available musical talent.) I find nowadays that I will spend money on live performances, but not on recorded music. It is not to make V-signs at **AAs, but because I get less and less out of recordings and more out of the real thing.
I'm beginning to sound like an English version of Umberto Eco and possibly wander off topic, but I think there is an important point to be made here. In our time the number of people interested in technology remains, as always, small. The application of technology has been spread by commercial interests, to people who are not interested in what the technology is or how it works. It should be obvious that you cannot compare the set of "people, mostly in their teens in the 60s interested in space exploration and with unspecified musical preferences" with the set of "people, mostly in their teens in the 00s, who use iPods." It would be far more interesting, and relevant, to find out (if it were possible) if people in the 60s and 00s who were and are technically interested in audio reproduction were and are also interested in space exploration, i.e. if there is a correlation between the desire to explore the capabilities of technology and to explore our surroundings.
Pining for the fjords
Do people actually think that other people whose generation is defined by the iPod can actually understand what space exploration is and what it means?
The kids that currently comprise the "iPod Generation" are dumb enough that they are lucky they haven't killed themselves opening a door.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
This is where everyone else that isn't in the "iPod Generation" can say "all the more for us." If all those pod-carrying snobs want to rot here on Earth, so be it. I stay away from most Apple products (although Apple itself isn't that bad).
I should know, being one of them. Although, yes, there are some of us who still care, longing for space travel and exploration as much as we did when we were three. The problem lies elsewhere, in the fact that it isn't popularized as much as it was. When I think about space exploration, I think rockets, and new places and opportunities, a literal "universe" of places to go, and discover.
When my so-called "peers" ask what they think about space, most of them in my school might not even give you the right amount of planets (although I myself have been having problems with that lately).
America has become weak, and I fear for my generation's future.
If it took us 7 years to reach the moon with 1960s technology (1962-1969), then why should it take twice that long to return with technology from around 2015? Even allowing for the gap in political pressure and social interest, that's setting the bar demoralizingly low in the eyes of the masses.
Nahh I'm in that generation.. they.. err we do.
I spend most of my days trying to teach these idiot people my age who Michael Badnarik is and why liberity is important.
LP kudos.
I think a large portion of the reason for this is the movie industry. For many years now, we have been inundated with movies about space exploration, and film makers visions of how that would take place. With the recent push for more realism in movies, it's almost like we've already been there. In movies, we've established bases on Mars, traveled the known galaxy, and saved the universe from certain destruction. What's left?
IANAL... But I play one on
We need to go back to 1940s population, ie kill 4 billion, but nicely!
Where is the most growth? China/india/middleast, the places where they decided to have 4-10 kids per family just so they can improve
farm productivity, or to 'sell the girls' to a wealthy groom.
Maybe some kind of super AIDS/SArs virus developed by the usa/who.
Then again maybe nature might do it for us if there are massive earth quakes/tsunamis and asteroid crashes, and sudden water shortages with spoilt
land so that crops fail in huge numbers (eat insects if you cannot find food people!).
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
What's to be excited about lately in space exploration? Another photo of Martian desert that looks like Barstow? (h/t Dennis Miller) When I grew up reading Heinlein and Niven, there might dragons on Venus, dying civilizations on Mars...interesting stuff. Instead we get scenic photos of Jupiter and Saturn (thanks!) and daily weather reports on Mars. Everywhere we look it's all negatives: sterile, too hot, too cold, air too thin or too thick, gravity too heavy, etc. Sheesh, thermal vents on the ocean floor are more interesting and alien than anything we're likely to see in this solar system! And Hubble still hasn't detected one Dyson sphere or Ringworld! I can't get excited by shuttle missions because they're like bus trips: carry cargo up, maybe fix a satellite, fly back down. Other than the spectacular liftoffs and dangerous environment, it's somewhat like watching a FedEx jet do its job day after day. Whereas with my iPod, I can close my eyes and imagine while listening to audiobooks of Heinlein, "Doc" Smith, and Brin. Advantage: iPod
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
The universe after the bing bang may have been a set size (http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answe rs/031030b.html)
but it grew faster than the speed of light to a massive size, possibly infinite (but why cannot they calculate its real size if it was
estimated at X size after Y years after the BB, or is it 5000billion LT wide, but we can only see 15b)
Any way... the real universe is many times larger than what you can simulate with fractals and bigger than all the atoms
in your computer.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
To put it in perspective, the iPod generation is indifferent to a lot of things, like Math, Science, and the future of the planet. Actually, they're indifferent to anything that doesn't involve Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton in some way. So I suggest we just put them on a rocket and send them to the moon...
What do you mean, "current"? 18-25 year olds have always been relatively apathetic when it comes to politics, with the notable exception of those times when there was a military draft, a very obvious invasion of politics into their daily lives.
Why the apathy? Because they've been excluded from politics their whole lives. They couldn't vote until age 18, so no politicians paid attention to any of the issues that mattered to them, and in return these future voters didn't pay attention to the issues that mattered to anyone else - those issues were irrelevant to them. It takes a few years for them to realize their opinions are finally worth something.
This is hardly unique to youth. For example, how many adults do you see buying parenting books, practicing to be good parents and forming opinions on parenting issues, years before they actually have kids? In general, adults who don't have kids are as apathetic to parenting issues as minors who can't vote are to political issues. The main difference is that once you have kids, you're forced to face all those issues immediately; once you turn 18, you don't have to face any political issues immediately because voting is optional.
If you want young people to be involved in politics, you have to make it relevant to them. Let them vote.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Well, of course we need to send construction guys up there first. The problem with NASA is that they aren't interested in sending a construction crew up there. They're interested in sending half a dozen guys up there to collect neat looking rocks.
Everything NASA does is about science. People aren't interested in science, only in the results, and only then if it's really interesting and simple to understand.
Joe Sixpack won't care about what NASA is doing on the Moon until they announce plans for the first moonbase that'll take regular people. You tell a regular person that NASA's going to the moon again, and the most immediate and obvious question they'll have is why? If the answer is something "sciency", they won't care.
Besides the HST, nothing NASA has done in the past 20 years is interesting to the average person. I think the reason is that everything else they've done, like the various planetary probes and even ISS, has been done before. They've just been doing the same things (to the average person) over and over again.
I'm not saying they shouldn't be doing sciency things, just that they can't expect the average person to care about it.
I worked in the space program, specifically the Apollo program in the late sixties. Now I am in MY sixties!! I have nothing but loathing for the iPod or any of its cousins in extracting the hard earned money of working people for the benefit of bloated putrid monopolies selling putrid music that would not earn its keep in a fair open competitive market.
That said, our space industry in the United States is about on the par with the putrid moooosick industry. Our President has proposed a ship called the 'orion' or 'crew exploration vehicle' depending on what one reads. This ship if one wants to call it that is little more than a coffin into which we will place frail hopes. It is little more than the size, interior wise, of a volkswagen bus interior. It is fragile. It has no continuous propulsion capability. Its maneuverability is limited to short bursts of directional thrusters. A few short bursts. Into this literal beer can we propose to put six unfortunates so that they can sit in the dark in the cold of space for up to two years with inadequate supplies and an assumption that they will be able to 'mine the fuel for the return' when they get to Mars. As presently configured, they will have to do a 'high altitude low opening' individual parachute jump on a one way trip when they arrive. No worry though. They will be dead of: starvation from running out of supplies; radiation sickness from sitting in a beer can in a rad storm halfway there when our 'ole sol' gives out one of its famous corona discharges; killin each other from frustration or boredom or whatever...the Russian Cosmonaut Uri Krikalaev called this isolation and enforced closeness the perfect formula for murder; or they could just fart themselves to death and asphyxiate each other on their own flatulence. They will have to conduct all bodily functions during the whole trip. Where will be put the waste? How much of this will be water lost?
On the other hand, the Russian space program is much better thought out. They plan to go to Mars with a very large spacecraft. They plan to use solar electric propulsion utilizing a solar collector the size of a small town. They plan to shield the crew behind several feet of armored panel and fuel. They plan to use hydrogen propellant for reaction mass. They have on the drawing board a crew vehicle, the Kliper, that contains an emergency escape system AND provision for carrying a lot of supplies. The Kliper is part of a modular system including a propulsion module that mounts behind it and is scalable. Another module is the Parom interorbital tug for moving assemblies from low orbit to high orbit. The Parom is solar electric powered as well. Their modular system envisions a large crew quarters based on a scaled up Zvesda module(s) presently in use in the International Space Station. The complete Mars mission ship also envisions emergency escape module and a modularized Mars lander/ascender system. It is huge.
It is pilotable to many optional destinations. It is survivable. It will keep its crew alive
and healthy and entertained (important on long voyages). It has room for some privacy..again necessary for long voyages. It has room for real science!, something we ourselves have stated as our reason for going...that is before our knowledgable purresident proposed to put our men into a leaky beer can so their freeze dried bodies can be found some time in the future. No wonder our young people are not turned on by our space program. They know losers, in music, movies, and space travel when they see them. And NASA's plan is a real cropper. Wanna see a real plan.
Go to Roscosmos ENERGIA site and look at a real plan. If all we can come up with is to basically murder our astronauts, we owe it to our people the option of supportin the Russian plan
We have been in space their whole life and we have been doing the EXACT SAME THING in space their whole life. With no indication of doing anything more in fact until just recently when the moon and mars were mentioned again.
:(
BORING
I can see why they would not be terribly excited about space exploration, they had nothing to be excited about
I don't have any kids, but my brother has three. I happen to live not far from an Air National Guard bombing range, which has an open house each year. It includes all kinds of aircraft going through their paces; F-16s attacking ground targets with cannons, rockets and free-fall bombs, A-10s roaring overhead in a steep bank, while their gatling gun tears apart old junked trucks. Even B-52s dropping entire loads of dummy bombs.
In a word, really cool.
Anyhow, I invited my brother and his family up for this, thinking he'd enjoy it -- and especially his junior-high age son. At his age, I skipped school with a friend once to go watch the Thunderbirds.
The boy, however, spent most of the day talking about this air-combat game or another air-combat game on his PS2, and acted annoyed whenever the roar from various jets was too loud for him to talk. He preferred the simulation to the real thing!
Since then, I've mentioned this to a couple of school teachers, including a science teacher who just returned from a week at Kennedy Space Center. She wasn't surprised, and before Thanksgiving, told me her students were simply not interested in space travel, including returning to the Moon and then going to Mars -- but they were very interested in space games!
In the 60's, the space race was motivated by two things:
#1: There was a very real need to build rockets capable of putting nuclear weapons anywhere in the world.
#2: Once the Soviets had accomplished that, the Americans needed to do it better.
In the 00's, the space race is motivated by only one thing:
#1: Make NASA so expensive that the next administration - Democrat *or* Republican - will be forced to kill it entirely or risk bankrupting the country.
Face it, the current administration hates science. They hate it because it erodes religious dogma. They're trying to destroy science in schools by underfunding programs and destroy it in the public sector by overfunding programs that have no chance of success and little impact on science. And considering how the deficit is expanding exponentially, I'd say that the next administration would have to make some astoundingly drastic cuts to keep the government from collapsing. And it's not like they're doing anything about creating more scientists to employ.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Look, designing a lunar base in not outside of our current engineering capabilities. I also have no idea what building a zero-G space station has to do with designing a 1/6 G habitat on large-ish moon you can burrow into.
Certainly we have to build to higher tolerances these days. But we know what those tolerances are, and we are building nothing, doing nothing, but going in circles in low earth orbit running experiments drempt up by school children.
The space station serves no purpose. None. There is no new science being conducted there, and the platform has no utility for staging other missions or building space craft in orbit.
NASA, you want excitement? Establish a permanent international colony on the moon. You'll never get more positive press than when the first baby is born on the moon.
I call shenanigans: I'm a prototypical member of the "iPod generation," yet am one of the biggest proponents of renewed and expanded efforts in space exploration. And all my friends, also members of this misnomered generation, are as well.
Oh Slashdot, the drivel you'll accept and post is astounding sometimes.
Clearly the crystal ball is a spinoff from the manned space program. Otherwise, how on earth (pun intended) would you possibly know what a space program would look like today if we had never intended or desired human flight?
The truth is that what you spend on a manned space program is pitifully small. I've said it twice in this thread already: $45 a year. That's it. Let's consider the possibility that earth will no longer be habitable by humans at some point in the future. Looking back, I'm pretty sure that people will consider your $45/yr to be a good investment in exchange for the survival of the human race.
And you complain that NASA couldn't get much return out of the small moon base that they're contemplating. As if you'd be here supporting it if they were trying to go for something (dare I say) out of this world in scope? NASA has always demonstrated a belief in the adage that you must walk before you can run.
And by the way, Teflon was created in a lab by DuPont in 1938. It had nothing to do with NASA. Neither did velcro (invented in the late 40s), or the microwave (invented in mid 40's). But that means nothing. Many advancements are, indeed, owed to NASA. And since we can only imagine what NASA would look like w/o a manned program, we have to attribute these to the NASA that we know.
What tangible effect do you think you'd feel if the 17BN nasa budget was pared to $2BN? What affect do you think that $15BN would have? Do you think it would go into your pocket? Even if it did, could you possibly notice an exta SEVENTY CENTS A WEEK?
The problem with lack of interest in space, or space exploration isn't that it's completely boring or too technical - it's just not within the means of 99.9% of most folks. You either have to be someone tied to the government with a great military and/or scientific track record or a multi-millionaire/billionaire to get to space. So as neat or cool as being in extended weightlessness seems, etc. - it's entirely out of reach.
So the majority of the latest generation probably has a lot more enthusiasm for the internet. It's something that connected to the tangible such as your PC or iPod, or as cool as the ideas behind the latest open source or MMORPG. It's right where you can get at it. Not to mention it's reasonably affordable or even free depending on where you get access.
If NASA figures out a way to get into space for the price of a small car, with few bureaucratic restraints, and do it regularly and reliably - you'd definitely see young people interested in it then. Not to mention the upstart industry jobs and unique real-estate potential. (You wouldn't need a degree either. Space colonists will need service industry support just as much as anyone else.) As it is now, it's just something you see in the news. Maybe the most someone will get out of it is to think, "That's neat, but it doesn't do much for me right now.", and get on with life.
As for recent developments, a moon base might not be an entirely bad idea. But on one condition. They need to build a radio-astronomy array on the away side, and establish a strictly maintained RF quiet zone. It would be a big step forward in being able to observe things completely blocked out by man-made noise and the ionosphere.
Perhaps the more routine it becomes the more it seems like a crummy job to be stuck in a can sucking nausea pills with death on the opposite wall, a toilet that tapes to your ass and food sacks you can't smell.
Philip K. Dick was right. Someday, they will have to advertise (a lot) to get longterm workers.
The internet generation is all about doing things... not watching passively about things being done. The TV generation were thrilled with watching space travel, because life was about passive consumption to the TV generation. But with the Internet Generation, it is about putting your own videos on Youtube, hacking your game console, building your own rocket powered go-cart. The Internet generation knows that there is no way they are going to participate in NASA projects, so NASA is really nothing but a very very expensive TV production studio.
Back then there was a need to prove that the United States was superior to all other nations (especially the Soviet Union), especially in technology.
After landing on the moon and whatnot, that has been accomplished. Yes, the United States really is the most fantastic country in all of history. The Soviet Union gone, the rest of the world struggling to be like us. We made sure our kids knew it. They know it. Space program? We already proved that we are superior, and we have to keep it that way by setting the muslim world straight.
I notice that young people these days still have our core interests at heart. This time the results are different.
/. should have a very high response towards space. And yet, there are many here who consider NASA and/or even space travel as total waste of money. If you study some of the responses, you can get a feeling of who is who. And most of those that shoot down space travel as not needed, are young. BTW, if you follow really closely, there are many here who knock NASA as it sits currently and they are typically not young, but mid 30's or older. They simply disagree with where NASA is currently spending money.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think that I must fall somewhere between Baby-boomer "got space on the brain" and iPod generations.
What is the big deal with space exploration anyway? This planet is paradise for humans, and we are perfectly evolved to make the most of it if we so choose.
Maybe I just don't consume enough (any) tv and movies, and as such care much more about the real world that I am confronted with every day. I care much more about this planet and it's continued health and well being than a bunch of dead nearby solar objects. These space obsessed yahoos are the same sort that had to keep conquering, destroying and homogenizing the wonderful and unknown corners of this world. And what do we have to show for it? War, loss of cultural identity and Macdonald's and Starbucks everywhere. Well they can keep it.
The world is what you perceive it to be. I think that the iPod generation has discovered that the secret to happiness is being happy. Realize the things that you like and indulge yourself. Would you be happier if you were somewhere far away and with less air and food? You might be if you had an iPod with you!
I'm from "Gen X" and I've always thought the space program was a bad idea. People say, well, even if we drop the space program we'll still have poverty, famine, etc. Sure we will, but, I also think that as a great nation if we turned our resources toward one goal we could do the equivalent of putting a man on the moon--and by that I mean, we could do something that for previous generations was a flight of fancy. Now, for people who say, "well, we've gotten a lot of great research out of the space program that was turned into great products we use every day." I'd say, sure, but, my bet is that if we'd spent all that time on money directly on research for things here at home we'd be even further ahead today. I know there's a lot of value in the accidental discovery or the unforeseen use of breakthroughs in a very narrow field, but won't that happen as long as scientists are working long and hard to solve a certain problem? Trust me, I'm not at all anti-science, and think the space program served a valuable scientific and morale-building purpose at one time, but considering that our planet is falling apart, there are plenty of diseases we thought we'd cure by now, and we still barely understand how our brains work, I think there are plenty of "missions" that would get people excited about science and would serve a more useful purpose than moon bases (an idea that would be laughable if it weren't so criminally wasteful).
NASA's budget is on the order of 15 billion dollars a year. That sounds like a lot of money, but it's a drop in the bucket to those programs that are already "right here".
What do you expect from a culture that glorifies stupidity and mediocrity?
Their attention spans are about the length of a 3:20 Britney Spears song. Do you expect them to be able to understand concepts like delayed gratification? This is also a country where the USA Today, written on a second grade reading level, is the No. 1 selling newspaper.
Want to know why Joe and Jane of generation X isn't interest in space travel? because what is being done is absolutely pathetic and boring to the point that the paint drying channel has more viewers than during a launch to the international space station.
I think the Simpsons episode, when Homer is put into space, put it best: "to find out the effect that zero gravity has on tiny screws" - wow wee, pass me my ipod quickly or otherwise I might decide to chew on the barrel of a gun.
How about having some decent damn goals; building a huge fucking space ship, build a space base that is HUGE to the point that the government no longer wastes money gallivanting around the middle east playing 'geo political engineer', dream about a space station, terraforming etc. on Mars.
I mean, if you're going to have a space vision, how about making it remotely bloody interesting to generation X; I sure, and many of my contemporaries would actually give a damn about space if it actually had some 'edge' factor to it - you know, remotely, but making possibly, the whole idea of travelling through space and migrating to different planets.
Sure, in reality, it might take 2-3 generations, but atleast it would maintain a level of interest in the future rather than people losing interest simply because the scientists have forgotten to dream a little, and show a little vision for the next 100+ years of human development.
... you whiny pretentious twit. You've just inherited the problems the previous generation did not fix. Welcome to adulthood!
First of all, there is a rise in religion, astrology, magic and medieval fantasy; and I am not talking about USA only, but about the world. We are going into a 2nd middle ages, only this time it would be harder, because destructive technology is far more advanced this time, the world's energy reserves are depleting in an ever increasing rate, economic systems are wildly unbalanced, and population is increasing in 3rd world countries. In this light, people do not find science exciting any more, and space exploration is primarily about science.
Secondly, it seems that there are no exciting breakthroughs in physics and space exploration any more. Unlike computers, space exploration is basically the same as it was 30 years ago. We are still exploring Mars, while our imagination has already 'explored' this galaxy and others.
God dammed juvenile trespassers.. hehe.
Bringing liberty to the masses. - http://freetalklive.com/
Many space exploration boosters think that manned exploration is more exciting than unmanned. It's not.
When we were going to the moon before, we hadn't really seen any pictures from the surface of the moon, let alone videos. Similarly, at that time, we were seeing many other places up close for the first time, such as Mars. In fact, we were really reaching beyond the Earth's atmosphere for the first time.
But after the novelty wore off, who cared? Who cares (or is more than peripherally aware) that there are people on the ISS right now? Who really follows each shuttle launch or landing (now much more interesting due to the perceived very high chance of catostrophic failure)? Even going back, after the first few Apollo missions, how many people continued to be excited about watching people go to the moon?
What's more, we hadn't yet realized how idiotic the idea of people LIVING in space or on other worlds was, at least as other than a stunt/research experiment. (Which we now realize. Or should. It would be as easy for people to live on the bottom of the ocean. There is a reason there are no hotels or amusement parks or settlements in Antarctica.) Going to other planets is NOT like travelling across the ocean to the New World.
I believe that space exploration is still interesting - I think many people, even from younger generations, found the imagery from the Mars rovers fascinating, as well as perhaps the new images of Titan from Huygens (though they were pretty difficult to make out). I just think that adding "manned" into the mix doesn't make it much more interesting, unless you're going to put a bunch of dysfunctional folks together with a video camera to create a reality TV show.
They might as well be religious fantasy stories, just replace the space monsters with dragons/demons, the aliens with elves/angels, and the wormholes with magic portals.
All the 'sciency' stuff is really superflous in these movies, an excuse to add more wiz-bang special effects; so why not just go for pure fantasy to begin with? Hence the modern success of The Lord of the Rings versus than Star Wars trilogy(s).
To truly get kids captivated by space, you need to create stories that capitalize on space travel/colonization's unique potentials. Alien environments and their effects on people's daily lives, freedom from terrestrial governments and cultures, the possibility and nessesity to evolve according to new ecological niches radically different from the womb planet, and the implications of those changes to society and to the human psyche.
Works that get this right are Kim Stanley Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy, and "2001: A Space Odyssey". These works take into account the facts of space and the facts of the human condition/situation to generate possible futures for human evolution in space.
And each of these works (2001 does it in a metaphorical manner towards the end) shows how fantastic developments are possible within the lifespan of the current generation.
Ah, here they are!
http://www.dittmar-associates.com/Market%20Study%
Gen iPodder here. Not that space research isn't interesting/useful, but there are so many other worthy scientific projects that deserve funding. At some point, we've got to do a cost/benefit analysis. Take the Human Genome Project, for example, which cost only a fraction of NASA's yearly budget. I'd argue that projects like the HGP are just as inspiring and far more important than putting a man on the moon.
There are no excuses for our apathy but I do have some ideas about why and where it comes from.
For me the space race was very much a nationalistic motivator that occurred when people had a lot more hope for everything in general . Forgeigners still had the hope that coming to America meant a bright and better future. People in America still had the sense of the American dream. The world's political landscape was in a very fluid state after the many historic events that would take place in the 50's 60's and 70's. Communism was targeted, attacked and effectively vanquished from many parts of the globe. I get the sense that the world was a very exciting interesting place, add to it the mystery of not knowing what was out there, constant breakthroughs in science and the exciting realities that the developing world of computers brought forth.
For people of the iPod generation around the world, there seems to be a growing feeling of America as an opressor versus a liberator. People in Europe are comfortable where they are now, why should they care about this big loud country that their parents made such a fuss about? For them their countries are equally as important and they want their say in a world that has been undeniably shaped in recent years by America. Why should the youth of their countries, remain excited for or even about a country that constantly shows up in the news in a negative light?
Many of the things that excited the world in the 60's have lost much of their appeal. Hollywood, though it still dominates the entertainment landscape, is not the glamorous exciting place it was from the 30's to the 60's. We have so much information about celebrities and atheletes that the mystery of fame is gone and it all seems just a little bit seedy (at least to me). Science, for me, has become scary. The realities of global warming and over-population make the future look far less appealing than it may have looked 40 years ago when people where unaware of those things, or when they were under the impression that by now those problems would be solved. I don't need to mention the problems of politics. As an American youth, I see my peers starting to realize it's not okay to be apethetic about who runs this country. Unfortunately, it's coming a bit too late. Hopefully the interest in voting created by the mistakes of the current regime have spurred a lasting interest in voting for people my age.
Also in your day people invested a lot in the companies they worked for. For me it all seems like a sham. If the social security system could go bankrupt, if situations like Enron can happen and take my parents lifes work and throw it all away, why should I feel anything but apathetic about working for large corporations? Thus, the entrepenurial spirit in people my age is strong. My parents think I'm lazy for not seeking out a 'real job' but I have simply lost faith in the systems. I'd rather work for myself than some corporate entity that could shit on my future. To put it simple, the youth of this generation can only directly respond to the actions of the generation that came before us.
Furthermore, I understand that the youth of all cultures are seeing what difficulties lie ahead for us all. For American youth, the fact that our country is in horrible debt with dimenishing financial influence over the world is a bit eye-opening. The fact that our military is so "strong" yet so ineffective and damaging when mismanaged, is also disheartening. For youth around the world, there is a lot of promise but many of them don't want a future dictated by corrupt politics from another land. Even in science, with the current state of the American education system, many future innovations will come from other countries who may fairly take on the role as leaders in that field as well (ex. China, India).
All that said, I have a great hope for the future. I think the internet is an exciting place right now and for me, it spurs the kind of euphoric wonder that space e