Can Space Nerds Get Along?

An anonymous reader writes "The Space Review asks whether space enthusiasts can ever get past the humans/robots and private/government flamewars. The article argues that space politics is a non-zero-sum game, and that space science, human spaceflight and private spaceflight can all co-exist. The debate between space and Earth is resolved in the same way: a non-zero-sum game that supports both Earth projects and space projects."

Comments

Re:We DO

[kebes]

You're right. The author is pointing to some sort of nebulous conflict, without actually citing any examples, and frankly I'm not sure such a conflict exists. Everyone I know who is keen on space exploration supports both robotic and manned missions, for instance. They tend to cheer-on both NASA and space tourism.

Where heated debate does sometimes arise is specifically in those instances where it is zero-sum: for instance when NASA is considering its budget, trying to decide how many dollars to spend on manned missions and how many dollars to spend on robotic missions. This heated debate is not usually conflict, but rather the very process by which scientific and technical consensus is reached. I'm not saying that there is no such thing as conflict in these domains, or that everyone always gets along... but I don't see massive ill-will, either. Most of the people debating want the same thing: expansion of knowledge.

TFA makes curious statements like:

What would a non-zero-sum future look like? More joint activities between the interest groups would be a good beginning.

I'm no expert in the politics of space exploration... but who are these "interest groups" really? As far as I know, NASA pursues both manned and robotic missions... and so NASA is composed of people from both "interest groups." So, really, isn't NASA very much a "joint activity" between these "interest groups" ?? Everytime that NASA uses humans to effectuate repairs on automated space systems (e.g. Hubble), it is a joint activity between the human-exploration and robot-exploration projects.

So... where is this conflict of which TFA speaks?

Re:Doesn't matter - the Chinese will get there fir

[WindBourne]

You are marked as funny, but the truth is, you may be right. They are discovering a number of resources underground as well as have a new economy. They are in a MAJOR growth phase. while developing (as well as "borrowing") lots of technology. CNSA is going slow, but that is because they are developing infrastructure. I doubt that they will get to the moon first (private industry will be there by 2015 assuming that bigelow does not have any accidents), but they may very well reach Mars first (no later than 2025).