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UK Reconsiders 1986 Decision To Ban Astronauts
An anonymous reader writes "The British space agency, BNSC, is reconsidering its 1986 decision to reject all human space missions. The decision has dominated British space policy ever since, leaving Britain out of many American and European space projects. The UK is the only nation in the G8 group of leading economies that does not have a human space flight program. But space enthusiast groups like the British Interplanetary Society are trying to persuade the British government to participate in both manned and unmanned space activities."
Theres this thing, im not sure you have much of it over the pond, its called science. There is know need/point in wasting money in some ego race to see who can touch mars first, but by exploring the universe we can expand our scientific knowledge.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
No, read the article. As a Libertarian sort I'd be down with that part about not stealong my money to blast somebody else into space. But yhey are spewing propaganda to British school children. To quote the article:
That is a sign of a civilization that has lost not only the will to live, it isn't even all that curious anymore. If you aren't ever planning on roving over the mountain eventually, why waste the money sending a robot to look around?
Democrat delenda est
erm, it didn't. Read a journal and you'll see that experiments just happen, e.g 'chemical A was mixed with chemical B and C occurred', not that the tense matters but my point is it doesn't have to be a human doing the experiment to get the data. On earth we tend to try and get humans as far from the experiments as possible, because we lack the rigor of robots.
There is little chance of sending a man to astrological location is the most efficient way to gather scientific data, so why bother when wed be better of spending the money researching stuff like stem cells, evolution or black holes.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
So what is the point of sending people to different planets?
As Sir George Mallory said, when asked why he wanted to climb Everest, "Because it is there."
Or even, as Robert Burns put it several hundred years earlier -- A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Human spaceflight is risky, ponderous and expensive. But there is a very deep, very meaningful reason to push on. See, I've always held on to the frail hope that one day we will leave this rock. It's why I read science fiction. I mean, who does not? I can't imagine it another way. I find contemplating the inevitable extinction of the human race utterly depressing. It's our deepest instinct to survive, after all.
Square one is always going to be expensive. But it's certainly not a waste of money. The peripheral benefits are enormous. Advances in engineering, industry, science and enough to inspire so many. Can you imagine if a woman was the first to step on Mars? She'd inspire us all. I'd like to see that in my lifetime.
We got hundreds of pounds of Moon rocks back to Earth was via the manned missions. A lot of those samples were selected Harrison Schmitt a geologist, based on geological significance, once he got there. They were thereafter distributed to leading geologists around the world, many in the Soviet Union even. The samples have probably done more to advance our understanding of the Moon than any other thing. The last Apollo mission was the most scientifically significant. We were just getting started.
It did not crash the US federal budget. It caused no wars. It employed 400,000 people. It gave Boeing and Locked Martin something to build besides bombs. Apollo was almost invariably, a great thing. Without Vietnam, perhaps it would have continued on.
I don't have a problem racing to Mars. In fact, I think we should be there already. We've been sitting on our laurels since the 70's. The apatite for realizing the Arthur Clarke type human future in space will vanish in a few generations if we don't give those generations anything to look forward to.
You realise that NASA is a US government agency, don't you? Those 'worthless bureaucratic tax feeders' were responsible for just about every advancement into space that the US has ever made...
...with the exception of SpaceShipOne of course. Well done. Of course, SpaceShipTwo will be a joint venture with Virgin Galactic, a British company.
Ironically, you could say that British manned flight is more skewed towards private enterprise than it has ever been in the US.