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Why Space Exploration Is Worth the Cost
mlimber writes "The Freakonomics blog has a post in which they asked six knowledgeable people, Is space exploration is worth the public cost? Their answers are generally in the affirmative and illuminating. For example David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, said: 'Businesses were started and are now meeting payrolls, paying taxes, and sustaining economic growth because the founder was inspired by the early days of the manned space program, often decades after the program ended! This type of inspiration and motivation seems unique to the manned space program and, of late, to some of our robotic space missions.'"
It is is.
So an economist asked some guys who haven't gotten past the broken window fallacy? Ok, whatever.
Space exploration may be justified, but let's see if we can talk about without getting dazzled about all the jobbies it creates.
Yeah, yeah, flamebait, etc.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
When I was 15 or so (ten years ago), I read Carl Sagan's Billions & Billions which was a book more about his thoughts than science ... or maybe I'm repeating myself.
... but I digress.
But anyway, at some point in that book, he talks about ordering this novel device that is a world in a globe. It's a nutrient mix in water with some sort of tiny aquatic animals. But the globe is sealed. The instructions are to leave it where sunlight can hit it and let nature do the rest. So Sagan puts it on his desk.
The next day, the water is foggy. Soon after it is teaming with microscopic life.
But after a short amount of time, the globe goes silent and there is a dark residue on the glass with nothing else in the water. Sagan pondered if the earth had a similar "maximum capacity." Now, there are differences, we can cite different natural processes that replace what we take making them a replenishable resource. But our numbers and pollution threaten them. He also discusses population control and ends up with the general conclusion that war, diseases, natural disasters and the like will cap us out somewhere around 2010. I, unfortunately, don't see our growth slowing as much as he projected.
In fact, it made so much sense to me that, at the age of fifteen, I wrote a letter to my Minnesota senators urging them to push for more spending to NASA & even subsidizing the private sector--after all, how many billions go into defense? Surely some of that could be better spent to begin the lengthy process of insuring that we will not have a glass covering over the earth. My words fell on deaf ears as I received no response. I don't believe I've written a letter to a politician higher than the county level since then although I have received a letter from the vice president for completing the Eagle Scout Award
The point is that if we continue down the path we are taking with pollution, don't invest in space travel and continue to procreate, we are sitting in a glass casing. It's only a matter of time before we put ourselves in a near suicide contention with constrained resources. If we don't have peaceful space exploration and means of growing outwards, our only solutions are war, mass genocide, famine, disease and many horrible ugly scenarios.
I still see the need for making extraterrestrial planets sustainable to human growth and development.
My work here is dung.
Governments should cut taxes and privatise space agencies, while encouraging private spaceflight. Without private spaceflight, we cannot explore the space in an economically efficient way.
... from the pro-NASA panel he asked - here's comment number 5 from the blog (and there are plenty of others):
"Everyone seems to be in agreement! I would think so being that 4 of the 5 panel memebers are current or former NASA employees! Perhaps more care should have been taken in ensuring the diversity of the panel. There must be some arguments to the contrary out there and I'd be curious to see those debated as well.
-- Posted by Mike Mogie"
They asked the following people whether space exploration is worth it:
- G. Scott Hubbard, professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University and former director of the NASA Ames Research Center
- Joan Vernikos, a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy and former director of NASA's Life Sciences Division
- Kathleen M. Connell, a principal of The Connell Whittaker Group, a founding team member of NASA's Astrobiology Program, and former policy director of the Aerospace States Association
- Keith Cowing, founder and editor of NASAWatch.com and former NASA space biologist.
- David M. Livingston, host of The Space Show, a talk radio show focusing on increasing space commerce and developing space tourism
- John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute and acting director of the Center for International Science and Technology Policy at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs
They all said yes. Who would have thought.
... is usually a very bad idea, knowing how much times the basket fell in the past. But space exploration is not just searching for a backup to save a sample of us. Just trying to do that, either in things we must develop for it, or things we find doing that, or things we discover out there, are short term benefits that must not be discarded (put the question before there were communication satellites and think in how much we could had lost).
I loved the "Why do it now?" question of a senator... you can ask the same question every day, except the day that is already too late.
Let's ask Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Attila the Hun if Genocide is | Why not ask some people whose mortgages and careers are not so completely ied up in the venture. What a dumb article. I guess it's just our wonderful News Media coughing up blood and not able to get it up anymore.... as usual...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
- the world needs geeks
- the space program fosters geeks
It's the best way to ensure the survival of humanity, and in the long run it's a very good economical investment (as it's a n investment in science and technology). However, in the short run it brings nothing to the common man (except pride and owe, maybe). So the question is, what do you want.
By the way, I've seen someone talking about private space exploration, but we must remember the amazingly high costs and the relatively high chances of failure in any specific operation. There is no way a private "for profit" organization will take such expenses with this odds against it, not until it's relatively safe and simple due to government-funded research. It is no coincidence that most modern inventions (computers, for example) were made by government-funded bodies or at least, by a company that it's main costumer is the government.
They surveyed ex-NASA people to ask whether spaceflight is worthwhile. Now I would like to ask the Slashdot community whether computers should exist.
Well, at the boundary waters, I drank out of the lakes, ate the fish, it was paradise. Later I went to college at the University of Minnesota and thank god that you can't get into the BWCA except with a canoe or helicopter. You can't swim or fish in the lakes/rivers of Minneapolis. So what's my point? Well, everywhere man has touched that I've seen, things have just gone down hill. Those trees and resources that once covered North America? Gone. We bitch at Brazil to stop deforestation when we did the same damn thing when we settled this land.
Go see the world? Go see Manilla? Go see West Virginia? Go see Brooklyn? The super stack nickel refinery in Canada?
For every single place you tell me to go see, I'll show you a spot ravaged to hell by the human race.
My work here is dung.
according to thishttp://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/12/150207 someday soon the space around planet earth is quickly filling up with space junk or chinese pirates and shooting rocket ships in to space can become real hazardous...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The 16 Billion NASA gets is .01% of the 1.6 Trillion that goes into Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid every year. Funding space exploration at this bargain-basement budget level should be a no brainer
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
A convertible space ship for picking up hot alien babes for guys with really small booster rockets.
Capt. Kirk eat your heart out!
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The economic benefits of privatizing space exploration are well worth the initial transition period.
We don't need to waste our money on an army that just inspires douchebag politicians to start shit. Put 10% of the military welfare towards space exploration, and tone down the aggressive rhetoric.
I mean, why should my tax dollars finance an over-powered military which sucks hard at stopping current terroristic threats? Because you're pants-filling fear says so?
(Hyperbole used for effect)
Blar.
Because their core philosophy is incentives and disincentives, and suddenly they're stuck in the middle of the aforementioned broken window fallacy.
I'm surprised that the same guys who figured out why NFL coaches rarely make risky calls (the coaches make choice that defer blame, mostly to players), can't really figure out what gives with the whole space flight thing.
NASA has been the subject of too much blame. It's that simple.
Since the Challenger accident, NASA has been on a losing streak. Except for Pathfinder and Surveyor, NASA hasn't had a real public relations success since the Apollo program ended.
You need to incorporate the Bitch Slap Theory of American Politics into this. Americans like strength. They like projecting strength. And they slink away pretty fucking quickly when America cannot project strength.
The consequence is that we treat NASA with shame. Not we as in geeks and Slashdotters. I mean we as in the same people who think America can win a set piece war (as if there even has been such a thing since WWI) in six weeks, and that we can win wars against abstract concepts (Terror, Poverty, Drugs).
NASA has been bitch slapped repeatedly, and American slink away from that. Americans see NASA as a loser.
NASA needs to get on its public relations horse. Seize this return to the rocket program as an opportunity to not just do a great job, but to project itself as a force in American politics, the way it did under Kennedy and Johnson.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Vernikos on the R.O.I. of space travel: "Economic, scientific and technological returns of space exploration have far exceeded the investment. ... Royalties on NASA patents and licenses currently go directly to the U.S. Treasury, not back to NASA."
I'd like to see more detailed evidence of this. In the past, there have been some "creative accounting" under such claims.
Space exploration will eventually allow us to establish a human civilization on another world (e.g., Mars) as a hedge against the type of catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs.
True, but a perm moonbase is better practice than Mars.
Space exploration in an international context offers a peaceful cooperative venue that is a valuable alternative to nation state hostilities.
Why is robot exploration not counted for this also?
National prestige requires that the U.S. continue to be a leader in space
Again, why is robot exploration not counted for this also?
Exploration of space will provide humanity with an answer to the most fundamental questions: Are we alone?
This makes no sense. And, they are cutting the budget for remote "Earth hunter" scopes to pay for Mars men.
Personally, I think humans will be better at unstructured environment exploration than any existing robot for a very long time.
The Apollo program has showed that one does not really know what they are looking at until it has been analyzed in detail back at a large Earth-based lab with top equipment.
It fuels curiosity, inspiration and creativity.
We already know what Mars looks like. The inspiration comes from going to NEW places never seen before, and only robots can do this practically. I'd rather see a robotic boat exploring Titan's lakes and shores than an astronaut kicking dust around on Mars. Or a robo-sub in the seas of Europa.
At what cost? Is there a price to inspiration and creativity? Economic, scientific and technological returns of space exploration have far exceeded the investment. Globally, 43 countries now have their own observing or communication satellites in Earth orbit. Observing Earth has provided G.P.S., meteorological forecasts, predictions and management of hurricanes and other natural disasters, and global monitoring of the environment, as well as surveillance and intelligence.
These are unmanned technologies.
Table-ized A.I.
I disagree, but people who do aren't given much of a voice in the media. If you read the article you will see that all the 6 people are related to working on manned space missions, directly or indirectly. It would be more interesting if they asked a random cross section of scientists. In this case, the game is fixed.
It has changed before and it will change again, homo sapiens or no.
In my opinion, the capricious nature of Nature is an even better argument for extra-terrestrial human colonization.
In other words, saying we need to develop space travel because we are screwing up this planet is pretty lame. A big rock can fall from the cosmos next month and kill us all. That should be motivation enough.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
six knowledgeable people, Is space exploration is worth the public cost?
No, they should spend money teaching how to speak and write instead.
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Bikini'ed Space Babes!
How can we be sure that the whole "Humans need somewhere other than Earth to live if we are going to prevent ourselves from dying out" argument is not just pseudo-scientific technobabble? I am not arguing against it, but I feel like to the uninformed (I RTFA and they are a set of very knowledgeable people) the prospects for life on *insert_planet_here* are slightly warped out of proportions. TFA said that "within the next century" we will be commuting to space.....somehow I feel like this is being said based on a weak argument. If someone said "Within the next century, we will have technologies X, Y, and Z, which will make spaceflight much cheaper and more reliable," then I would believe them.
Instead it sounds like what is in the back of their mind is "Well 100 years is a long time and by then we should have it down pat." Sort of like 2001: A Space Odyssey - Back then the argument would have been "Well 2001 is a long ways away, we should have moon bases by then, right?"
Yet another analogy could be the concept of Strong AI. From Wikipedia:
Are we just assuming that we have the knowledge to tackle the issues necessary to having regular space travel? Or are we so ignorant that we don't even know what stands in our way? Is everyone just trying to make the world of Cowboy Bebop / Outlaw Star / Star Trek / Star Wars happen in their lifetime?So basically all the comments I've seen either complain about the obvious pro-space bias of the persons interviewed, and a few other comments seem to imply that we'll somehow save the world by leaving it for outer space, which misses the point.
I didn't read TFA, but I know the main reason why such things as the space program are needed is that the money invested in it has great repercussions on the economy in the following decades, just think about all the mainstream products/services that are the fruits of such program's research.
That's it, I saved you 10 minutes of your life by dumbing down an article I didn't read into a mere sentence.
You just got troll'd!
It may have already been said, but even so it bears repeating that space exploration is critical to the survival of the human race. No matter what we do, Earth will not be here forever.
Maybe the Parthenon was a waste compared to some of the other pressing projects at the time. And why where all those highly educated types in Greece and Alexandria allowed to spend their time thinking about philosophy and abstract geometry, instead of working on civil and military applications?
If the human race is around and in good shape 1500 years from now (and we might not be), the main things the USA will be remembered for will probably be its early work on digital computers and the space program. Regarding the latter, it won't be so impressive if we drastically scale back the program after 45 years.
Those simple folks who worship military power keep modding down my anti-war posts. I guess they want US troops to keep dying because their daddy is already dead or something. I just don't get the rabid fellating of the military in this country. Not once in 40 years has the military been used to protect Americans...the 'threats' were always abstract and unprovable.
Blar.
NASA isn't running the show, the military is. Believe me, I love NASA and support space exploration, but let's be realistic... ...if it weren't for the military man wouldn't have been on the moon in 1969 - it would have come later, perhaps much later, or not at all. The Sputnik response was fear, for defensive reasons. The space race was pretty much the same as the "missle gap", and it was no coincidence that they happened during the same era.
Why isn't Mars so much of a priority? One of the reasons is that there are so few benefits for the military.
Or why was the space shuttle so important? For science, or because it served the military's need for a certain size of spy satellites and testing. Remember when the Challenger exploded? Remember after the long time before the next mission? The first missions after that were military, because that was the priority.
Do you think Reagan loved shuttle science or that was the best way to get the Star Wars missile program he advocated? Oddly enough, Ronald Reagan, a huge supporter of NASA, also said that the big military build up in the early 80s would aid job creation.
I love the whole geek thing, but when you support NASA you're supporting what is first a military program and secondly a science mission.
What percentage of astronauts have been, or were in, the miltary?
Knowing this, I still support NASA and hope they receive more funding.
parent is a troll...doesn't provide even the most basic support for his contention
please mod down
on topic, i think private space exploration is great...too bad no one is really doing it. right now, the only active presence of private industry in space is for SPACE TOURISM, not exploration...it's all about some rich guy doing a sub-orbital shot and going 'whooopppeee!' during his 10 minutes of 0g
space tourism is not the same as true exploration, no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any exploration...all they have is a power point presentation and a sales pitch...slashdot has discussed this thoroughly...can't we accept this and move on now?
Thank you Dave Raggett
The manned projects are driven by the need to keep taxpayers fascinated enough to continue NASA support. If the manned missions then represent the true cost of the unmanned missions, perhaps it still worth it in the greater picture?
John F. Kennedy, 9/12/1962
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Before I get started: I actually quite like the space program, and I do think that some advances were made for it. But the "it created jobs!!!" argument is IMHO still a fallacy.
There's a more subtle version or relative of the broken window there. The fallacy is assuming that those jobs wouldn't have been created by someone else, for another purpose.
The thing is, since we've been Keynesian all along, all the governments have known about the Phillips curve too. In fact, applied it.
The short and skinny is that there's an interdependency between inflation and unemployment. So for more than half a century what all governments did was try to stay at a point of their choosing on that curve. That's the reason the Federal Reserve tries to keep inflation at a given point, for example. Because too much inflation is bad by itself, but too little creates unemployment.
So in doing so, it fixes the employment where it wants it too.
Basically if those jobs hadn't been created by the space program, then they would have been created somewhere else. Not the same jobs, mind you, but a roughly equal number anyway.
The even more insidious part of the "but it created jobs!!!" sophistry is that it tries to imply that something was gained where nothing would have been created instead otherwise. People already nod and imagine that all the things those people achieved in those jobs, are surely better than nothing at all, because they wouldn't even be employed without a space program. Which just isn't so. Those people would have been employed, and would have produced _something_ in all this time, with or without a space program. Each job there, came at the expense of exactly one job somewhere else. Every 8 hours day spent reviewing why the shuttle's heat tiles broke, are 8 hours that weren't spent (by that guy or someone else) on some other project.
A point could still be made whether we benefited more from those jobs, than from the alternate history version without a space program. Unfortunately, none of us knows what would have really happened in an alternate history. Maybe all those jobs would have been cabbie and McDonalds jobs instead. In that case, sure, we're better off with them working (directly or indirectly) for NASA instead. But at least theoretically it's equally possible that they would have worked on some better project instead. Maybe in that parallel universe without a space program, all those smart people worked on fusion power instead and now have cheap energy everywhere and a bunch of innovative electronics trickled to other domains from _that_ research. We don't know.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Whatever the merits of a demonstration vs having taken the lives of civilians, the U.S. did conduct a demonstration of the Bomb, for the benefit of the Soviets and others.
Bikini is a widely-used term for a certain type of two-piece women's bathing suit, but is the name of a place in the Marshall Islands where one of the early atom bomb tests were conducted. It was the site of the "Crossroads" tests of Hiroshima-sized bombs, and it was one of the few "public" tests for which there was a lot of film footage. I heard that the bathing suit became known as a bikini because people in the 50's had "Bikini" parties where women would wear revealing bathing suits because people thought the Bomb would end the world and one wanted to go out doing whatever one wanted. If you have seen images of atom bomb shots (such as the montage at the end of Dr. Strangelove), you have probably seen film of the Crossroads shots at Bikini Atol.
Apollo could be viewed as such a demonstration of war technology. Apollo was a combination of rocket power to take enough payload to bring men to the Moon and back, inertial guidance systems to achieve the bullseye accuracy of the rocket launches, and enough reliability of the rocket propulsion and other systems to get the men back.
It has become cliche "If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we feed a poor child a school lunch? If we can put a man on the Moon, why can't we have a high-speed train?" and so on. But it was in the manner of perhaps indirect military threat "If we can put a man on the Moon, darn tootin' we can target a nuclear warhead right down the air shaft of the men's room in the Kremlin."
If the 20 billion-dollar (1960's dollars) Apollo program was ape threat posturing, the Sputnik launch which started the whole space race was much the same thing.
Peak copper
Of course it's worth exploring! Just think of all the technology and advancements we've already brought back from the Gou'auld, the Asgard, and the Ancients. Naquada reactors, hyperdrive engines, beaming technology. Who knows what more might be out there!
Is the Earth flat?
But it would be even better to spend lots of money on alternative energy research. It would generally have the same benefits as space exploration. Spin-off technology, stimulating a the development of the middle class, etc. And of course we eventually have alternative energy, which could be of almost unlimited value.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
> Space exploration is not a drain on the economy; it generates infinitely more than wealth than it spends.
Infinite return on investment? At least if you are going to ask people whose livelihood depends on the answer, don't ask ones who don't know the difference between finite and infinite. You have to scan the posts by responders to find the term "opportunity cost."
On the whole, the blog post is a good read if you want to lose respect for Freakonomics.
A parallel, in my mind, are libertarian arguments for less of whichever-bureaucracy-is-convenient. We're all supposedly free agents happily pursuing our separate agendas. Yeah right, 300 million "free agents" living within a confined national boundary, with our existence bounded in a web of interdependency. If you can maintain the illusion of being a free agent in THAT, then you have a better imagination than I do. My point is, we don't make greater-good decisions on the basis of individuals. Long term investments in infrastructure, technology, or business incubation are speculative in large part. A selfish individual might not give such the go-ahead. That's fine, but don't presume that the individual has some wonderful predictive sense that they can see the outcome of a long-term venture. It just isn't real. Right or wrong, like it or not, sometimes we have to pool the resources (and the risk) and do things as a collective.
The Red Mars, Blue Mars, Green Mars series by Kim Stanley Robinson covers a thousand year period from when humans first colonize Mars. It presents a pretty plausible, hard science exploration of that millenium, from the technology to do so at the start, through the social changes that occur on Earth (struggling with massive overpopulation) and Mars (the development of planetary polity), towards the general colonization of the solar system (moons, space stations, and asteroids also inhabited).
It certainly doesn't present colonization of the solar system as a panacea for our abuse of the Earth, or as a strictly useful strategy for ending our dependency on a single planet. But it does demonstrate the usefulness and the rewards of continued space exploration.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Most of the answers and justifications include manned and unmanned exploration. If you take the benefits from unmanned exploration out of the responses from the selected pundits, the answers are much less emphatic.
(not my view, just an observation that the question wasn't properly answered)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
How many were inspired to want to go to space by watching Barbarella?
Soooo... let's make Jane Fonda a budget item.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Which is a whole lot different, as it excludes unmanned exploration
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Find free books.
If you want to know why read a news paper.
We can not get out of the solar system using rockets. Only a fundamental advance in physics can get us out. Therefore money should not be spent on cheap tricks with rockets. Money should be spent on fundamental physics. The builders of the UFOs have figured out how to do it. Therefore it is possible and we should work on figuring it out.
The physicists should play it like a bridge hand, that is, assume the contract can be made. That is, the physicists should assume as a axiom that there is a way out.
Nothing is lost by assuming this hypothesis. If it is false, we are all dead.
Every country likes to think that it has a superiority in one area or another. Using progress in (manned) space exploration as a prop is part of Kennedy's legacy. It's probably good for another coulple of decades - while people who were young adults during the 60's are still alive. After that I think it'll become much less important both to the people as a whole and to therefore to the politicians. Unless NASA can pull off another space-spectacular or aliens pay us a visit.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You don't expect me to write essays on Slashdot, do you? Raising an opinion you don't like is not trolling.
no private industry has any legit plans/funding to actually DO any explorationPrivate spaceflight isn't only about business companies, it's also about not-for profit associations of citizens. I am a member of the British Interplanetary Society and the Planetary Society. Who launched Cosmos-1? Planetary Society did! Who studied nuclear pulse propulsion? British Interplanetary Society did! And now Planetary Society is going to launch Cosmos-2. So, we can go to space without governments.
Sometime in the future freedom-loving people will go to live in independent space colonies and let people who still believe in inefficient big bureaucratic tax-collecting governments to stay in their polluted home planet.
...not that people will ever stop doing that. But on the bright side - we just might find someone else to blow up. Or have sex with.
Or eat.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Space travel with chemical fuels just barely works. The energy density just isn't there. No matter what you do, your vehicle is almost all fuel tank. That's why we need multistage rockets, weight-reduced to the point they're very fragile, to put dinky payloads in orbit at huge costs. There's been no fundamental improvement in big rockets in forty years. Arguably, rocketry peaked with the Saturn V.
Forty years is a long time. Aviation went from the Sopwith Camel to the Boeing 707 in 40 years. Computers went from the UNIVAC I to the Pentium in 40 years. Rocketry, well..
Unless we figure out some other way to launch, we're stuck.
Either go nuclear or go home.
This is a great summary of the arguments regarding space exploration and my take on each argument.
Two issues arise here. First, the most likely sources of this sort of catastrophe are created by humans or preventable by our actions. If we spend our effort trying to allow the elite to escape the planet instead of trying to save the rest of humanity, what does that say about the people we are? Second, even if the catastrophe is not human affected, should we make such an economic investment simply to preserve our genetic information? Are we so vain as to think that our first purpose is to keep some slim vestige of humanity in existance?
The figure is as bunk as virtually every attempt to determine the total economic value of a program. Few are arguing that the space program has been completely free of useful technological advancement, the question here is on the relative value of spending resources on manned, extra-planetary, and deep-space programs versus other research closer to home on programs like climate change, health and human services, and civil engineering. As for exciting children, perhaps educational reform would be a better place to spend that money.
While space exploration has a WOW! factor, try comparing it to international crisis prevention and non-military aid. It's a lot easier to hate foreign nations when they are spending money similar to your entire country's GDP to send people into outer space instead of feeding and clothing the poor.
In the past, exploration has involved finding other humans. I don't think reasonable people would claim that we stand any chance of finding other people out there. If we did find intelligent life with the capability to interact with us, then only the realm of science fiction can shed a glimmer of light on the outcome of such a meeting.
Perhaps people forget that the prestige that the United States has enjoyed for the past seventy years came not through exploration, but by attempts to strengthen the economies of the crumbling European empires to protect anti-Soviet alliances.
Those who claim that the question of our extra-planetary neighbors is more important to humanity at this point than our ability to co-exist peacefully are dangerously foolish. The timeless problem of humanity is "How can we maintain a decent standard of living given the environmental and social fluctuations which endanger it?".
...we really only need to launch one third of the population....
You do not need "space exploration crews" on the space station do conduct global warming research. In fact, anything in earth orbit can be done robotically or by telepresence.
In fact, the authors seem to presume that "space exploration" means "manned space exploration"; it does not have to. Almost all of the benefits of space exploration are achieved with unmanned and robotic probes for the time being, and far more efficiently. The technology being developed for robotic probes is far more important to our economy than the technology for keeping people alive in space. And we need that technology for manned exploration anyway (since most manned missions will require robotic preparation anyway).
So, let's be honest and let's be clear: space exploration, for the time being, means robotic exploration of space. There is no point in wasting money on sending people to places that are fairly easy to reach (orbit, moon); it only takes away resources from the real prize: planetary and interstellar exploration.
One of the best arguments I've seen supporting space efforts was a fictional news interview that was shown on TV around ten years ago or so as part of a drama.
... and all of this ... all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars."
Interviewer asks: "Why should we spend money on space? Why do we need to spend billions building space stations, the ships to get there, unmanned probes, why are we interested in finding and someday visiting other planets in our solar system and, someday, outside it? What's the point? Why have a space program at all?" And I always mentally add the unspoken question of "why does the space program constantly get bad press for using, at most, 1% of the federal budget and why does it still get reamed out for being a money-waster when we spend trillions on killing people, which is not as productive and doesn't inspire dreamers? Please explain to these shortsighted idiots why it's important."
The answer was:
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu and Einstein and Morobuto and Buddy Holly and Aristophenes
i am a soviet space shuttle
We're floating in a big not-so-empty void. I'm 25, and still if I look up at the skies, or feel the sun on my skin I feel frustratingly inable to "reach to touch the stars". I try to closely follow NASA's projects, my day isn't complete without the Astronomy Picture of the day filling me with childish wonder about the world and reality we live in. The universe is magnificent, at least what we get to see from it thusfar, and there's so much more to be learned and seen.
It's hard to understand there are people who never look up and think "fuck yea, that's some cool stuff" but rather get lost in the futilities of life. Why wouldn't it be worth it? It's imperative for humankind, and it can guide a whole global population to reach further. But I guess CGI and fast snappy video's and imagery are more of interest for a whole lot of people.
What did space exploration brought us? Technology, inspiration for generations to excell and do what noone has achieved before. If you argue it has been a big expense, it's created a global market of Information Technology, and has brought people closer together. Partly because of the technological competition with Russia. Some big nations should get together and play game again, opposed to using some third world people as cannon-meat. Bring some mutual innovation and boost technological development instead of these vague "scientist have found that x but there will be y years before we can even think about practical applications or bring it to the consumer market"-bs.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Heck, if the American beef and wheat industries can invert the food pyramid, and if the CIA and military can have such close ties with the film and television industries, then if the people with the pull (Rothschildes and similar; people with gobs of power and no public personas to protect), really wanted Americans living in big vacuum cleaner attachments on other worlds, then they could sell it incredibly easily. Heck, I don't think it would even need selling; all it would need is a very little bit of money, (comparatively speaking), and an open casting call to the Slashdot types of the world. --Which leads me to think that space exploration is simply not on the agenda. I have to wonder what their disincentives are.
Actually, I know the answer to that. . .
Space exploration leads to excitement and creation for the joy it rather than for that bone-headed 'competition' thing they keep selling kids in ass-hat colleges. Learning, and opening and growing. These kinds of activities which are the heart and soul of exploration lead to states of mind in entire populations which Empower. --Empowered people cannot be controlled so easily, and the rich psychotic bastards of the world know this and fear this with gothic morbidity.
Is it any wonder that the space program blossomed under Kennedy? We have to remember the rich psychopathic bastards who ordered his death did so exactly because he was all about empowering the people. After all is said and done, that's the core reason those bullets flew. Everything ever since has been a stage production to trick us all into thinking that Bad Things Happen For No Reason. Bullshit. The slavemasters of the world want us stupid and fighting against each other in the mud so that nobody ever gets the idea of perhaps fighting them.
-FL
Where did you get that number? 1.6 trillion? I find that a little hard to believe. Actually, after Googling around to find out the U.S. budget figures, I find it impossible to believe. --You're not one of those irrational, "I hate spending money to help folks other than myself" people, are you?
-FL
It's that kind of BS attitude that is screwing over our environment as we speak because we're too lazy to clean up our own messes and "we can leave it for our kids to deal with". Well, that never got done because it kept getting put off.
News flash: the future matters.
Are you really that oblivious that you have to post arrogant, rude, and profanity-laden troll responses on message forums when people dare to think beyond their own tiny little world?
i am a soviet space shuttle
Take 1 trillion dollars, put it into a trust fund, invest in a mix of relatively conservative investments, pull money out of the trust fund at 1.6%, re-invest the remainder.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Ponder that, and your argument about the billionaires will become even bigger. Financial success in space would be the biggest game changer since the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru ruined the silver market in the 1500s.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
It's fairly straightforward really, without space Humanity with quickly reach the peak capacity of the earths ability to sustain us and civilisation as we know it will decline, inevitably so will the human population. Maybe not immediately, but unless we want to return to being a few nomadic settlers scattered over the face of the planet in a few generations, we had better get off this rock.
The irony is that this argument is even being had with the line..
So in other words NASA could be self funding if they were able to realise the R.O.I from their investments, in other words the space program could already be self perpetuating if it were allowed to stand on it's own two feet. In other words from forty years of returns we would probably have space stations and all the other things if the income NASA derived from invention was plowed back into itself, without the need for government funding. I'd be curious to see what else NASA could have come up with from the invention they weren't able to fund.
Suddenly this argument looks a whole lot different to me now that I've discovered that NASA's real budget has been plundered for the last 40 years. Collectively we have expanded into all the four corners of the earth, where else is there for us to go?
Until we start treating space exploration with the seriousness it deserves we will looking at the end, rather than the beginning, of history.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
it involves the thinkers, the doers and the middlemen, and three (planned but only one built and launched) vast spaceships......
Obviously it's worth it. Here's an example I just thought of. I was thinking of actually being an astronaut in orbit doing work in outer space. I haven't thought from this perspective in maybe a year, and that was when I was reading an excellent manga on space exploration, Moonlight Mile.
I was thinking that when robots are in space or say on Mars they look at different bands of electromagnetic radiation than humans do. They are more likely to have a couple of bands of infrared than red, on Mars apparently. But space is where you push the envelope. It would at least be neat, and would seem useful, if astronaut's helmets could have integral cameras and other sensors that serve to extend the amount of spectrum visible to them. (Maybe they have it, but I never heard of it so far.)
By using the helmet as a heads-up display, or possibly just painting the retina with a laser, it would be possible to overlay what the scene ahead looks like in infrared, ultraviolet, or perhaps radar or x-rays.
Certainly the shuttle or space station the astronaut is next to would be able to do better sensing and could relay the info to the astronaut, but there is something about having such a camera actually mounted on the person that seems attractive. For example it really would extend the human sense; it would function when the mother ship is out of commission, and could work in enclosed spaces, or even when indoors or on the ground.
Moonlight Mile talks about astronauts becoming acclimated to really living in space. Physically, they deal with low air pressure and the danger of incoming space shrapnel. Intellectually, they deal with the shock that comes with grasping the vastness of distances.
It seems such things as extenders for the human senses and can be a little advantage that makes the difference between survival and not, and certainly in space, it is advantageous to unlearn terrestrial rules of movement and thought sometimes it seems.
I think this is not just a thought exercise, it could be a valuable tool and it could even have uses on the ground. We would not think necessarily about it in the same way, for example a heads-up display that shows schematics for maintenance of aircraft is how Boeing used to see HUDs as far as I know. But a spectrum extender could give scientists or lots of other people the ability to pick up on cues from a human perspective that make it easier to notice changes in the environment and maybe gain an ah-hah insight. I bet a chef would love to try one out!
To get a trillion dollars, you'd have to use nearly all of the individual income tax revenue collected in a single year.
And what are these conservative investments that you'd put a trillion dollars into? Government bonds?
You do realize that taking a trillion dollars out of circulation just might have some effect on the overall economy and the value of a dollar, no?
You talk about a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
No offense intended, but your Google skills must need work. Wikipedia for starters:
$586.1 billion (+7.0%) - Social Security
$394.5 billion (+12.4%) - Medicare
$367.0 billion (+2.0%) - Unemployment and welfare
$276.4 billion (+2.9%) - Medicaid and other health related
Total: $1.623T
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007
More:
White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/
Office of the President: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/browse.html
Congressional Budget Office: http://www.cbo.gov/
I think that is sufficient to back up my point.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
I may be mixing this though with the manga PLANETES (written in cyrillic) which features dodging debris in orbit.
Matt
"Lack of Motivation."
Men and Women of humanity are driven to accomplish the amazing. We all have this dream, in some form. Space is the next wild frontier in the expansion of humanity, and as such, it inspires millions upon millions of people. Every human since the birth of humanity has looked at the night sky and said "wow..."
Energy, Education, and Poverty are not yet bad enough to hit people in their motivation. If it does get there, then it will be solved (although, I believe it will be solved much earlier). But space is not a broken window, it is a dream.
I will continue to dream about the possibilities of the future, and not dote on the uninspired. This is how we build our future.
- DaftShadow
The indisputable fact that space exploration leads to (among other measurable benefits)
access to more natural resources (read: an inevitably expanding economy)
technological advances (read: more conveniences for you)
and here's the Libertarian kicker: the chance to move your home so far remotely from the reach of Governments that you can live your life without the fear of Communist intervention
pretty much means that funding space exploration mends more windows than it breaks.
That having been said, an economist knows what "externality" means. That word, which is highly relevant to this discussion, explains why your "broken window fallacy" accusation is wildly off the mark.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
This has got to be a fallacy of some sort, arguing that 16 billion is a bargain because other costs are so much more expensive.
Is Space exploration worht the cost? Yes because it keeps Sci-Fi writers in business. Is inventing a way to make pretty designs on textiles worth inventing? yes because it led to computers being created. Is wine drinking good for science? yest because it lead to making wine glasses and eventually to laboratory ware (the Japanese were late comers to science due to drinking saki out of bowls). Is animation a the most important discovery of the 20th century? Yes because it led to single-frame cameras (CCTV/crime prevention)digital imaging in every sphere you can think of. Is the Iraq war worthwhile? Yes because it empowered the government to set up surveillance systems on crime, safety, etc that would not otherwise have been acceptable. It also proved beyond doubt that our reliance on oil in well overdue and that alternative systems have to be sought in a hurry, and the answer to global warming will be a result of the war. Does it matter that by the time the war in Iraq and Afghanistan end they will have killed something like 500.000 by the time they are settled? Not particularly, as that is far less than die in a week from disease and starvation. In fact more people are killed from snakes in India every year than are killed by guns in the USA.
To be fair, though, your point about the percentage spent on NASA being comparatively small is quite valid. I'd rather see it come off defense spending, though. (Which is not accurately represented as the Wiki article points out).
-FL
Aside from all the short-term disasters, there is the ultimate long-term one that will occur as the sun reaches the end of its life and Earth becomes uninhabitable. I think the point is simply that we can't rely on our future, more technologically capable descendants to lift us off this planet. There's the very real possibility that we could enter a technological dark age from which we may not emerge for a long time. One of my favorite quotes:
The problem with repeating the broken window fallacy over and over like some sort of mantra is that it assumes that the benefit from breaking the window can never be greater than the opportunity cost. What if the glazier, in a hurry for a dinner date, slaps some goo on the glass and in the process discovers $25 windshield repairs while-u-wait? That outcome is never discussed by economists.
Yes, it's not, because it's a bad argument.
It's true, that it's possible that there could be some amazing accidental discovery because of that event. But the probability would be no greater than the probability of a flash of insight when doing all of the other tasks that would be done had the window not been broken.
Yes, amazing discoveries are often made because of accidents. No, encouraging sloppiness and destruction will not *in the aggregate* increase the rate of innovation. What you gain in chance discoveries, you more than lose through the complete unreliability of the rest of your more methodical work.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
If our civilization does not collapse, and continues on it's current rate of growth ,then the need for resources will eventually push us into space. The Moon, Mars, the moons of the jovian planets, the asteroid belt all contain much needed resources. It's just a matter of time.
Imagine what would have happened to Europe back in the 17th and 18th centuries if the Queen of Spain had not financed Columbus expeditions back in the 16th century...Most likely somebody else would have, but if not Europe will have probably collapsed under the constant strain of constant warfare for the then known ressources....and some other civilization would have risen to dominance (probably china) and expanded out to the americas.
All of the posters on the linked article seemed concerned with proving that there is in fact financial incentive to explore space. That's nice, but it's a bit repetitive.
The argument for getting off this planet because we're making it unfit for human habitation is just escapism. Better to stay here and either fix the problems or get what we deserve.
But an extension of the "kids are inspired by the space program" argument, in combination with Carl Sagan's, adds something to this conversation. To wit: getting off the Earth and seeing it as a planet, and bringing this perspective back to its inhabitants, might be a source of inspiration--and fear! I've been told that seeing the Earth from space, shrouded with the thin, ephemeral shred of atmosphere, surrounded by the huge, cold universe, gives a unique sense of how fragile our system it is, how alone we are, and how important it is to take care of our home. For me, even photos do that. If more space exploration can improve that situation, then I would think that we really can't afford not to pursue it with everything we have.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
I pretty much gave up on this article about the time I got to this passage:
"It is true that, for every dollar we spend on the space program, the U.S. economy receives about $8 of economic benefit. "
Any sources to back that tired out platitude? I really doubt it. One day we may mine precious metals on asteroids and have colonies all over the solar system. But right now we are having trouble assembling a worthless space station in low earth orbit. Building a city in Antarctica would make more economic sense than aggresively pursuing a manned space program.
The growth potential of mankind on earth is limited. We are just barely starting to understand this as earths climate is starting to change through our own doing.
Even if global warming could be averted, other resource shortages could arise (water, landmass,...).
If we could settle in space we would have easier access to large amounts of raw materials (planets, moons, asteroids, stars [1],...) and energy. Our potential for growth would be limited still, but by what limits.
If growth isn't your thing just remember that your 401k plan is just based on the bet on growth.
Of course NASA isn't really up to such grandiose plans with its tiny budget. So if the western world (most of it anyway) hadn't gone to war over a waning resource (the Australian defense minister said so) but invested that kind of money into real and long term growth out into the solar system we would have something to look forward to. Instead we are descending into some sort of dark age where we cling to the memories and believes of centuries past, feverishly holding onto what runs through our fingers like oil.
OK, I went over board, but you still might want to have a look at this wonderful book
"Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience", ISBN 0-520-05898-4, 1985.
Its the conference proceedings of an Interstellar Migration conference held at Los Alamos in '83. Those people had ideas back then, they wouldn't
even have dared to ask dumb questions like "Is space exploration is worth the public cost?".
[1] The book mentioned above explains that stellar husbandry could be used to gain raw materials from stars.
Je me souviens.
If you count the result of the technologies of space programs used to further the plausibility of [nuclear] war [rockets], and literal lives lost in the program. It's a definite NO! For me. I otherwise like the rover mars program itself alone, the part I don't like is sending someone over there. Even the excuse of the needed human presence in space, is eclipsed by down to earth hi-tech. Maybe feeding more people will open other knowledge to us as brains need food to think, or are we too afraid of intelligent poor countries? Stop giving them guns for ridiculous sakes! Robotic space travel yes, humans in space? No!
Not at all. reagan and W. have created almost 10 trillion worth of debt and the pubs tell us that we are going to be JUST fine.
We would be better off giving the money to the poor. They need health care. To take care of their obesiety and So they can continue to buy beer and drugs and cigarettes. Have dozens of illiterate children. Or otherwise never contribute to society
Ever heard of the space elevator?
There is no sig.
First, to answer all the rest: Americans, how much do you think NASA's budget is? 15% of the US budget?
Then you're ignorant idiots, and need to send your computers back to wherever you bought them, 'cause you're too stupid to use one.
It's about $15B. How much did Apple spend on the iPhone last year on advertising? How much did the network get in ad revenue during the Superbowl?
Microcomputers? Space program. Remote medical monitoring. Satellite weather and phones. GPS. Before you say another word, *you* google it.
Medical coverage "for the poor"? Excuse me, but the median income in the US is $30k/yr (go to the IRS website, "Tax stats at a glance"). 20% of the US has none... and the military budget, NOT COUNTING IRAQ, is over half the US budget: hundreds of *billions* of dollars.
Then there's the other reason: our dreams. Anyone who thinks that *everything* has a price, and if it doesn't make you rich, it's not worth anything, are scum who should be sent out to clean the roads and push their belongings in a shopping cart. Without dreams *other* than "I'm Going To Be Rich (and have no other thoughts in my mind), you're *nothing*.
mark
I mean, I'm all for investigating the outskirts of existence itself, but let's face it. No one really has any clue what the hell they're talking about. What we do know is incredibly fundamental considering how deep that rabbit hole really goes. So yea, it's a good investment. But there are better. Why not give all this funding to the people researching the advances that will lead to a super intelligence? Nanotechnology, true AI coding, etc. After we get to that point, we won't need to pussy foot around with our silly little theories, we will then most certainly have the ability to understand it, as well as understanding whatever questions that understanding led us to ask. It's almost a redundant use of resources, imo.
-Kevin Stanislawski.