Where Are The Space Advocates?

QuantumG writes "Greg Zsidisin appeared on The Space Show today to ask Where Are The Space Advocates?. For the first time in decades Space is once again a political issue with all four major presidential candidates having something to say about space policy and yet nothing is being heard from space advocates. As we enter a new "Space Nexus" like we did after Apollo, now is a critical time to let your representatives know how you feel about space exploration, and yet no-one has anything to say." The show itself is a podcast if you want to give it a listen. Personally I'm hoping that this election puts space exploration back in the public consciousness- Apollo inspired a generation to learn math and science. I want my kid to be inspired by something bigger than that. And as some readers have noted- there are 3 candidates left (and really only two) so the submitter is probably high.

Comments

Conversly, where are the space critics?

[elrous0]

As someone who is extremely skeptical myself of the value of space exploration, I think it would be just as important to ask conversely "Where are the space critics?" The whole idea of space exploration seems to elicit and great big "ho hum" from the American people now (not sure about the rest of the world). Politicians are neither willing to adequately support it nor actively oppose it. So NASA limps along with neither the funding boost to actually go to the moon/Mars nor the funding cut necessary to move the space program entirely into the private domain.

Personally, I would love nothing better than the abolish NASA and move this whole thing over to the private sector. If the work is truly as important as NASA supporters assert, they should have no problem getting private funding (as companies like Scaled Composites did). If it isn't that important, and it's just some baby-boomer pipe dream, than the market will reflect that too.

Either way, the leaders of this country need to make up their mind whether they ACTUALLY want to do what they claim and send men to the moon/Mars (in which case they need to seriously boost NASA's funding) or whether they need to just scrap the whole thing altogether and stop bullshitting us about lofty goals that they have no intention of funding adequately.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[tak amalak]

Do you want to go back to steam engines and abacus too?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be cool tho.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[hardburn]

More likely, NASA will always be around to provide infrastructure and pure exploration. Unmanned private missions, for instance, would almost certainly be focused on searching for specific economically viable resources rather than pure science. NASA will still be useful for missions like the mars rovers.

Likewise, it's unlikely that a private body would be willing or able to invest in an advanced launch system, such as a space elevator or launch loop. OTOH, like the interstate hiway system, that's exactly the sort of infrastructure that the government could invest in to promote private ventures.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[frith01]

For-Profit Corporations have a focus on next quarters profits, not next decade. Space exploration is only viable on a national level. This blue dot we all live on will not last forever. If the human species is to survive, we must look elsewhere for possibilities. This cannot happen over-night, and we need to use mid-term goals such as a moon /asteroid colony , then mars, then after that who knows ? Even without that argument, there has still been lots of practical gains from space technology research. Taking the hard problems of energy conservation, materials research, and other science research has greatly improved areas in the commercial sector.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Alzheimers]

Don't think for a minute that NASA exists purely for humanitarian reasons. The reason it's becoming such a focus of political attention now is the same reason it did back in the during the Cold War - because of Space's importance in national security.

With the other developing superpowers quickly approaching the same level of access as the shuttle currently has, and some with ambitions to reach even further, the US Government can't afford to fall behind and lose the advantage of it's head start. China and India have both announced plans to revisit the moon -- something the US doesn't even currently have the capacity to do again. With Mars being the next great frontier, who will be the first to develop the technologies that will take us there? In a hundred years, what will be the ramifications of ceding the first foothold there?

Aside from the political aspect of being the dominant space power, there are also tremendous military technologies that come from developing for the space program, not to mention tactical advantages that can result from dominating space. From "innocuous" threats like shutting down enemy sattelites, to the real potential for MWDs parked in LEO over your enemies, there is a very real necessity for the space program to remain part of the government.

Private technology companies should have greater access and receive more funding, and further research into the depths of space will always require international cooperation and support. However, the US has reached the deadline of being the "Sole superpower" in the world, and once again must make the effort to compete in a global technology race. Anything less than a total commitment to being the leader in space technology would be irresponsible and dangerous.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[postbigbang]

There are additional critics that have watched NASA burn money furiously, put lots of expensive equipment into the ocean instead of space, have engineering standards and production practices that killed astronauts, while performing lots of military work that additionally invades privacy and puts weapons into the sky that have dubious value and effectiveness.

They've also made themselves a political football at a time when there's an unbelievable amount of money being spent on three different wars-- all but one of them dubious in origin. Add this to asset deflation (the housing crisis), inflation of the currency (790 billion dollars in new money printed by the Fed), high transport costs and deflation of the value of the US currency, and there's litte wonder why NASA's on the back burner.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[mea37]

The market reflects what is near-term profitable. Don't conflate near-term profitability with importance.

Regardless, lets suppose we privatize space exploration, and a handful of entrepreneurs, with the gifts of great foresight and deep pockets, step forward. They make great strides. They drive the R&D for space-related tech, so they end up owning the spin-offs. They control the orbital research, so maybe they start amassing patents from that.

Now years down the road, space travel becomes really important, and they're poised to make a huge profit. Are we (as a society) prepared to let them profit for their decades of investment, or will we claim that this undeserving elite is trying to exploit our need from a position of unfair advantage?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[nschubach]

Not to mention... Who owns the land on the moon? This is the reason I think NASA will always remain under the control of the government. Heaven forbid someone finds a way to live on other planets/moons and sends out a new age Mayflower with enough intelligence to write up a "Constitution" without any loopholes that will be manipulated by greedy "representatives."

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[elrous0]

No, I just want to go FORWARD to universal health care, more aid for impoverished nations, and all the other stuff we could be funding ahead of Joe Boomer's dreams of a Flash Gordon future.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[madm0nk]

"As someone who is extremely skeptical myself of the value of space exploration..." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[jtseng]

Personally, I would love nothing better than the abolish NASA and move this whole thing over to the private sector. Does anyone know how I can buy shares in Weyland-Yutani?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the grandparent would have no problems with a "Scramble for Mars" situation between competing mega-corporations. Myself, I'd rather see the vast undeveloped solar system be a level playing field for true entrepreneurs, not just Lockheed-Martin-Marietta-Convair and Boeing-North American-McDonnell-Douglas-Hughes.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[jandersen]

Ah, yes, the holy and ineffable market. This is what would happen if NASA was abolished and moved over to the private sector: The private sector would seek out the cheapest options and outsource to India and China. I'm not saying this would be bad, just that is what they would most likely do.

To me, space exploration is not about what is profitable or what would be profitable for a private company - that would be far too limited and shortsighted. It is about basic research, expanding our knowledge into unknown territory. If the onlyresearch that was allowed was what you could see immediate profit in, we wouldn't know anything about electricity, quantum mechanics, mathematics etc etc. The internet that is now considered so hugely important for our economy wouldn't be here - no quantum mechanics => no semiconductors, no maths => no digital computers, no electricity, well need I say more?

Electricity was nothing more than a curiousity for centuries - first described by the Greeks, as far as I remember. Most of the maths essential for modern technology was no more than intellectual games for a bunch of nerds; a sort of very esoteric philosophy with scarcely any practical relevance. If we don't do basic research, we will end up stagnating sooner or later. I don't think we can afford to be so myopic.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Ex-MislTech]

Alot of ppl want to bash the space critic here, but to be honest
we got ppl living under bridges.

We got thousands dead from a storm in the former Burmese state.

And WW III is about to kick off over oil reserves in the middle
east cause we still have to find things on earth to burn for power.

3 things down here on the ground should be addressed first.

1) a replacement for oil so WW III might be averted
2) world wide weather/tsunami/hurricane/volcano warning system
3) permaculture food sources for the 3rd world

Some jaded elitists feel the ppl under the bridges are not
as good as them and deserve their fate, and I assume these
same elitists feel the thousands dead in Burma are justified ?

I think not, and the billions going into space would be
better spent stopping world war 3 down here.

WW III is coming, and it is not gonna be as fun and playful
as WW I and II, the nukes are coming out to play.

The tens of millions dead will seem small by comparison.

It is like our leaders embrace the damned religious apocalypse.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

So that is why I ALSO feel that space should not be our first
choice for billions in spending.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

The job of government is to do the things that are unprofitable that private industry would not do -- but could later benefit them. Who would have privately built the transportation infrastructure? Who would have developed a nationwide and now worldwide network for computers? Seems obvious now but I seriously doubt private industry would have made the initial investment. The point is that much of NASA's job is basic research of a kind that you can not put a dollar value on but will someday undoubtedly aide us and could bring us the next big thing. Don't forget that NASA also brings you thing like WMAP, Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra that have brought us a whole new understanding of the universe and how it works. Future missions will even uncover more. Who knows how that knowledge will benefit us. Try doing that in partnership with private industry. NASA's basic problem is that it is viewed mainly as the agency which puts man in space and we have already achieved the few "wow" moments like putting man into orbit, building a space station, and sending man to the Moon that are possible with late 20th century technology and more importantly, the money that is available. The next space challenges such as putting a man on Mars are unbelievably technologically daunting and expensive. We have to ask ourselves if we should really be dedicating ourselves to that kind of pursuit at this time in history. My personal opinion is to focus on what NASA DOES do really well right now which is science and maintain a manned program that supports it until such time that we will be technologically capable of moving out beyond the Earth-Moon system. The problem with that is most people -- obviously including you -- don't value those things as much or more than what "neat" thing we can do with man and space for which you clearly believe NASA is synonymous. That's a problem of education.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should my tax money go to impoverished nations? I'd rather it go to something that benefits me.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Steneub]

We are the space robots.
We are here to protect you from the terrible secret of space.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ThreeE]

The reason private firms don't invest in those things is that that don't make any sense today -- financially or otherwise. Why should my tax dollars be used for such senseless things? I know, my government already invests in senseless things. But that doesn't justify investing in more senseless things.

And don't say "just like the interstate highway system." The only reason that seems to have made sense is that you aren't looking at what we could have done with those dollars instead.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ardor]

the billions going into space would be better spent stopping world war 3 down here. I'd rather spend the TRILLIONS that go into the wars and the weapons R&D. When will people learn that NASA isn't even in the top 100 of the US' tax money sinks?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ThreeE]

The market reflects what is near-term profitable. Not true. The market discounts all future cash flow -- near and long term -- by an appropriate discount (risk) factor. Your blue sky schemes (space elevators, etc.) are crazy risky with payoffs centuries from now and are therefore heavily discounted. It's fine if you want to invest in them, but stay away from the public treasure chest please.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

the market will reflect that too

Fuck the market. If we leave it up to the market, here's the future of space exploration:

1. Well-healed tourists cavort around in LEO, calling friends from the seatback space phones and exclaiming that earth looks like "a great big globe!"
2. Survivor: ISS
3. Girls Gone Wild, Zero Gee Edition

On the plus side, we can use the energy produced by Clarke spinning in his grave to power Sri Lanka for a few years.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Burn money? What, Monopoly money?

NASA's budget is retardedly small compared to the Pentium-agon's, even for an agency you seem to think has no mandate. It may even be smaller than my coffee budget.

The "space critics" are the people responsible for this imbalance (and many others). They would rather subjugate those cute Third World babes than those cute Venusian babes.. They just don't know what's good for'em!

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[mea37]

I assume you're talking about NPV. In this context, it's academic. Yes, it is assumed that each player in the market will account for cash flows current and future.

But I never said the market only accounts for what's near-term profitable. I said it reflects what's near-term profitable.

And if you close the econ book and take a look at the real world, you'll find that I'm right. The aggregate effect of the "discounting" you're on about is that the market reflects what is near-term profitable.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dpilot]

> you aren't looking at what we could have done with those dollars instead.

What would you have done with those dollars, instead? I suspect the common libertarian answer would have been to reduce taxes and allow people to keep the money. Then the free market would have stepped someone up to the plate to begin building a nationwide network of toll roads that though not free, would have provided better road service at no taxpayer expense.

A countering Carnegie-type argument would have been, "Why let the workers have more than minimal wage, when they're just going to spend it on booze and gambling?" Then the counter-Carnegie argument is that if your were really restricting workers' pay on principle, you should have educated their children, instead of simply increasing your own wealth. It's telling that Carnegie worked hard to give away his fortune before he died, but IMHO educating the workers' kids might have been a better legacy for at least part of the money.

Back to topic... One could argue that the highway example you mention has been done recently, with broadband. The government has not done any sort of broadband deployment the way they did highway or rural electrification or even regulated telephone deployments. As a result, it's perfectly obvious that US industry has stepped up to the plate and provided the US with the BEST broadband in the world, at the lowest prices.

Government may be incredibly stupid, but they have no monopoly on the attribute.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dpilot]

Heck, if you really want to make a difference on those things, don't pick on space exploration. At the very least, space exploration drives technology development and brings its benefits back to the marketplace manyfold. Plus space exploration is seriously underfunded right now, and there just isn't that much money in it. If you want some serious money to apply to worthy goals, go after corporate welfare.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Bassman59]

What would you have done with those dollars, instead? I suspect the common libertarian answer would have been to reduce taxes and allow people to keep the money. Then the free market would have stepped someone up to the plate to begin building a nationwide network of toll roads that though not free, would have provided better road service at no taxpayer expense.

So the people who pay tolls are not taxpayers?

-a

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Leftist Troll]

It's not about economic returns, it's about long-term survival.

"I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space."
-Stephen Hawking

Think of it as backing up your data. You wouldn't leave all your backups for something mission-critical on site, would you?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[sckeener]

Now years down the road, space travel becomes really important, and they're poised to make a huge profit. Are we (as a society) prepared to let them profit for their decades of investment, or will we claim that this undeserving elite is trying to exploit our need from a position of unfair advantage? I think C. J. Cherryh has covered this frequently in her books...

In particular, your example would fit well with Foreigner series....in that case Humans were already space explorers, but had to colonize a world already filled with sentient life because of an accident. Admittedly the books are more space opera and dealing with the interactions of different species' views...however the core issue is man has space technology and when the Atevi attain the level of tech capable of space exploration...all the issues that develop between the people that want the tech and the people that have the tech...

In general I think C. J. Cherryh writes a realistic view of what the cultures of space are going to be like...how they will view the planet bound and how the gravity well inhabitants will view their space brethren.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[renoX]

> Space's importance in national security.

Space's importance in national security mostly end with upper satelite orbits, what importance did landing on the Moon have on USA national security compared to sending satelites in upper orbit?
None, so why should landing on Mars be considered differently?

As for the technology benefits, sure investing to invent/refine new technology is important, but this doesn't mean investing for Mars exploration..

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[hardburn]

What, exactly, is the oppertunity cost of the interstate hiway system? According to http://www.dot.state.mn.us/interstate50/50facts.html, it cost $114 billion over 35 years (Wikipedia lists that as $425 billion in inflation-adjusted 2006 dollars). The trucking industry (born directly as a result of that hiway system) pulled $645.6 billion in revenue in 2006 alone. That doesn't even account for other uses of the system, like increased tourisim.

I'd say the interstate hiway system was a great investment on the government's part. Libertarians are free to throw a hissy fit if they want.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Bragador]

Impoverished nations tend to want their share of the loot. That means problems, terrorism and possibly war.

If you help the poor, they will less likely want to steal your money. In other words, you'll be able to do whatever you want in peace. This means it benefits YOU.

Also, while permanent poverty doesn't necesseraly breed war as much as transient poverty, if these countries start to have a normal society it also means that they will create new products and research new technologies. If more people are trying to build a better society on earth, it benefits YOU.

Being selfish can be useful but teamwork has often been noted to help the individuals get a better life or, at least, survive. So as counter-intuitive as it may sound, sometimes the best way to get ahead is to invest on others.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Mr. Slippery]

China and India have both announced plans to revisit the moon -- something the US doesn't even currently have the capacity to do again.

Which answers the question. Where are the space advocates? In other countries.

Here in the U.S., we'll be too busy for the next decade or two rebuilding what years of neoconservative policies destroyed to worry about space.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[hobo sapiens]

ironically, the reason Hawking can to say that is that mankind tends to put short term economics before the big picture. If we put long term survival and sustainability ahead of short term profit, we wouldn't have to look to space for long term survival.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dpilot]

Yes, but those tolls would not be taxes, they would be payments to entrepreneurs for services rendered. In the libertarian mindset, that's a MUCH different thing regardless of the relative magnitude of the costs. (In other words, being charged any amount a free-market provider is better than paying any amount by taxation for that same service, no matter what the relative costs.)

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[postbigbang]

NASA's budget is small right now because it's a political football without a clear mission or output. Space critics have a legitimate goal of trying to justify NASA's ongoing mission, its budget to accomplish that mission without exhorbitant under-forecasts, and to have reasonable oversight as to what gets done-- including rethinking safety design issues, and a realistic long term agenda.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[smittyoneeach]

want to go FORWARD to universal health care

I respect your right to this opinion.
Will you respect my right to want no part of this?
Those who want to embed this concept at the federal government level are respectfully encouraged to get it passed as a Constitutional Amendment.
With a Constitutional Amendment in place, Constitution-lovers like me can shut up about what a corruption of the ideas present in that document these socialized ideas appear to be.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[hobo sapiens]

If space exploration remains just another front for some possible war / muscle flexing contest, man won't make it out of the solar system. If someone were interested in space exploration for the purpose of learning and expanding our reach (as opposed to winning pissing contests with other nations) then the very first step in that direction is not more space exploration. It is learning how to get along with each other, because cooperation is the only way we'd be able to do it. For now, we are so stupid and backwards and we'll never get anywhere but vaporized if we follow our present course.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ThreeE]

Yeah, because it is silly to pour huge amounts of cash into a distant, unlikely, huge project. Much better is to fund near-term, incremental, likely, reasonably-sized projects funded by people with a stake in the outcome. All hail the power of capitalism.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ThreeE]

The difference being that when a company is stupid they pay for it with their own money and not my tax dollars.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[vajaradakini]

Until a large comet comes and wipes us off the face of the Earth.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[grep_rocks]

Yes we only have 5 Billion years or so to go before the sun turns into a red giant... so we better get moving on manned space exploration... Seriously the only reason to evacuate the earth is if we screw it up massively (which we are on track for doing) but the energy expenditure to move everyone else where would trash the Earth anyway - it seems more realistic (and I mean that in a laws of physics sense of the word) that we just try not to trash the place - have you looked at what other planets are like - seriously - the earth is a garden of eden compared to the rest of the universe - the earth is not disposable and there is no way we are all going to migrate off it to live in a space colony, mars or alpha centauri - we might hope in the distant future that one of our decendents might start a colony in space or some distant star but that in no way is a solution to our problems here on earth.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[vajaradakini]

As a result, it's perfectly obvious that US industry has stepped up to the plate and provided the US with the BEST broadband in the world, at the lowest prices.

Are you sure about this business of the US having the cheapest and best broadband? This BBC article seems to be under the impression that Japan's got some pretty sweet broadband and that the Swedes tend to get the cheap broadband and this place seems to think that the US doesn't rank in the top 10 in broadband penetration, which I wouldn't assume is a marker of the best and cheapest broadband.

Granted, I don't know if the governments in any of these countries chipped in to build the infrastructure.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[frith01]

I was thinking more short-term problems :

  1. Pollution: China, Russia, and many other countries are rapidly making their homelands into wastelands via corporate dumping. (yes, I know the USA is doing the same thing, but the scale of the problem is much worse.) What do you think they will do when they run out of resources ?

2. Population: Have you seen any recent U.N. graphs on population growth ? Where do you plan on putting the next 5 billion persons?

3. War: More countries are getting the nuclear button every year. Sooner or later someone will push the button, or release some other bio terror type thing which could reduce the global population by several magnitudes.

Space Exploration does not solve these problems, but it can certainly alleviate some of the population pressure behind these problems.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

I do not think of the tax dollars that I earned and pay to the government as loot that should be divvied up amongst the rest of the world. There is a reason other countries pay taxes as well. The space program at least has the potential to drive technological development that can benefit all mankind, whereas a donation to another country in no way benefits myself. Perhaps that makes me a bad person, but I prefer to think of it as enlightened self-interest.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[grep_rocks]

Seriously - how are any problems solved with manned space travel? - did you mean by moving the people off planet or by killing them all? because killing people to solve a population problem is much-much-much more cost effective than moving anyone to another planet - if we used a nuclear powered rocket (which incidentally works by dropping h-bombs out the tail end, and is the most efficent form of space propulsion - look up project orion on wikipedia) you could move a few hundred people (at most!)to mars at the cost of a few hundred h-bombs and trillions of dollars in R&D (you would also need a habitat on mars to house them - add your favorite mulitple of trillion) - or you could drop one h-bomb and kill millions - population problem solved! pollution too (less people is the best way to reduce pollution)... heck don't even use an H-bomb, kill people in an eco-friendly way with biological weapons - incindentally the rocket ship would cause more of an environmental problem than one h-bomb since you have to set off multiple bombs to get the ship out of the atmosphere...

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[FleaPlus]

For-Profit Corporations have a focus on next quarters profits, not next decade. Are you claiming that companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Bigelow Aerospace are solely concerned with short-term profits and not focusing on the long-term of humanity in space? I would heartily disagree.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[bendodge]

Universal Health care isn't forward.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Alzheimers]

Space Race

The Space Race was a competition of space exploration between the Soviet Union and the United States, which lasted roughly from 1957 to 1975. It involved the efforts to explore outer space with artificial satellites, to send humans into space, and to land people on the Moon.

Space Race effectively began after the Soviet launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 October 1957. The term originated as an analogy to the arms race. The Space Race became an important part of the cultural, technological, and ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Space technology became a particularly important arena in this conflict, because of both its potential military applications and the morale-boosting social benefits.

(emphasis mine)

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[hardburn]

The wooshing sound is a load of sarcasm going right over you.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Leftist Troll]

If we put long term survival and sustainability ahead of short term profit, we wouldn't have to look to space for long term survival.

A single collision from a large enough Near Earth Object could wipe out the human race. So could a new disease, or some other unforeseen scenario that we may be unable to prevent.

Better not to have all your eggs in one basket.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[OwnedByTwoCats]

As a result, it's perfectly obvious that US industry has stepped up to the plate and provided the US with the BEST broadband in the world, at the lowest prices.

Huh? I keep on hearing over and over that broadband is more capable and less expensive in most other industrialized countries than it is here in the USA.

Have a reference?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Bragador]

No but your house, car, land, natural ressources and all that ARE loot to other nations. Those who have less will want to challenge the rich to get their share. A donation to help other countries does benefit you indirectly. You are paying for peace. You are paying to keep your way of life as it is and to keep your goods to yourself.

Of course giving money blindly is useless but helping them get food, water and education will help them earn their money instead of stealing yours.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[OakDragon]

As a result, it's perfectly obvious that US industry has stepped up to the plate and provided the US with the BEST broadband in the world, at the lowest prices.

Are you sure about this business of the US having the cheapest and best broadband?

Only one problem - US broadband is incapable of transmitting sarcasm effectively.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ArsonSmith]

All hail the crap reality tv shows that capitalism has produced for us.

Why? Because they are top notch quality products that capitalism has produced and people want?
or is it because they are the cheapest possibly thing to produce that people will still pay for?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[vajaradakini]

My only consolation is that I don't seem to be the only one who missed it.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[hardburn]

Right now, the US DoD considers energy independence to be a national security issue. The best way to win a war is not to fight at all, and they'd rather not fight any more wars over oil. Which is why the NSSO is interested in space-based solar power.

The economic benefits of unmanned exploration are not up for debate. The use of satellites for telecommunications and weather prediction are too great to simply pass off. And that's just what we can put up there economically with a relatively lightweight payload up to geosynchronous orbit (at best). Reduction in launch costs and getting all the way to the Lagrange points opens up the massive metal reserves in asteroids, among other things.

Manned exploration is more debatable. I'd argue that as necessary as part of the self-actualization of the species (in the Maslov Hierarchy sense), not as direct economic benefits. Unmanned exploration, though, is a settled issue.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[renoX]

I already answered to the technology part: you can invest directly in technology development no need to take the exploration of Mars as a reason.

And yes landing on the Moon was morale-boosting yes, but I don't see at all landing on Mars having an effect of the same magnitude..

Especially as people will remember the Moon exploration: a few trip, nobody cares anymore and the project is stopped due to its high cost, so they'll expect something similar.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[sesshomaru]

What would you have done with those dollars, instead?

I'd have build a lot more state of the art train systems, like most of the civilized world.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[DerekLyons]

> Space's importance in national security.

Space's importance in national security mostly end with upper satelite orbits, what importance did landing on the Moon have on USA national security compared to sending satelites in upper orbit?
None, so why should landing on Mars be considered differently?

 
The national security value of space extends much further than providing hardware for direct support. It also includes propaganda.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ciggieposeur]

Will you respect my right to want no part of this?

Of course you have the right to want no part of it, but you'll only get my respect when you voluntarily pass up all of the other benefits you might receive under "socialized" ideas.

Stay out of public libraries, stay off the public highways, don't take any unemployment insurance, don't ever enroll your young children in WIC, don't go to a state university (or if you already have, donate the state-supported portion of your tuition back to the school), don't use federal loan guarantees to get through school or purchase a house, don't deduct your house or school loan interest payments on your income tax, and lobby any church you my go to to pay full income taxes like all other businesses do.

Do all of that, and you'll have a lot of my respect.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[doom]

The wooshing sound is a load of sarcasm going right over you.

Yeah, I know, but the original post was an example of astounding bad writing. On the net, there's no way to tell if the author is saying something resoundingly stupid as a joke, or if they really are resoundingly stupid -- except, of course, that the high average level of intelligence of slashdot posters makes that seem unlikely.

It might be a good idea to take it easy on the sarcasm button and just say what you mean, you know?

Just for the hell of it, something on-topic, from Paul Krugman: Slow in suburbia

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[beckje01]

So we need to attack all the poor people because they want to steal my house? (Yes its just a straw man) But really poor is a relative term imposed by others. Is a subsistence hunter / gather society poor? They don't have the concept of wealth so can they really ever be poor or rich.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[doom]

I'd say the interstate highway system was a great investment on the government's part.

It acted as a subsidy for long-haul trucking, and completely screwed up rail transit, despite the fact that rail is much more energy efficient. (But who cares about that these days, eh?)

It also inspired a fad for "moving to the country" (i.e. the creation of suburban sprawl), which cut the knees out from under the urban tax base, and created a generation of American's who are nearly incapable of any physical exercise, and have a very weak sense of community.

Further, I would argue that oil-addiction has corrupted American morals to an extent not seen since the days of slavery... when you talk about the dubious activities of the US in the middle east you get people quietly whispering "But we need the oil, don't we?"

Myself, I'm not an opponent of government infrastructure programs, but you guys might want to think twice before singing the praises of the interstate highway system. It's a pretty good example of unintended consequences.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[j1mmy]

Stay out of public libraries, stay off the public highways, don't take any unemployment insurance, don't ever enroll your young children in WIC, don't go to a state university (or if you already have, donate the state-supported portion of your tuition back to the school), don't use federal loan guarantees to get through school or purchase a house, don't deduct your house or school loan interest payments on your income tax, and lobby any church you my go to to pay full income taxes like all other businesses do.

I meet all but two of your criteria (roads and tax deductions). I don't think roads are a good example because those are funded by gas taxes in most states, so it's functionally a user fee, even if it's hidden.

The tax deduction is a very poor example because income taxes are a fraud in the first place. An individual's earnings has no relation to their consumption of government services. I certainly don't feel like I've gotten my money's worth out of the government for what I've paid during my lifetime.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[bob_herrick]

I find it interesting that you frame your objection to the graduated income tax in terms of the graduation (a method of employing an income tax) as opposed to as an objection to the income tax itself. The former might be a principled objection, say on the basis of constitutionality, the latter is just self-serving in the sense that it implies that if you paid less than your fair share, you would be fine with that.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[ThreeE]

Great example. But instead, the federal government picked a technology solution of their choice -- something it is utterly incapable of.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[smittyoneeach]

Will you respect my right to want no part of this? Of course you have the right to want no part of it, but you'll only get my respect when you voluntarily pass up all of the other benefits you might receive under "socialized" ideas. Stay out of public libraries, stay off the public highways, don't take any unemployment insurance, don't ever enroll your young children in WIC, don't go to a state university (or if you already have, donate the state-supported portion of your tuition back to the school), don't use federal loan guarantees to get through school or purchase a house, don't deduct your house or school loan interest payments on your income tax, and lobby any church you my go to to pay full income taxes like all other businesses do. Do all of that, and you'll have a lot of my respect.

Stay out of public libraries, stay off the public highways, don't take any unemployment insurance, don't ever enroll your young children in WIC, don't go to a state university (or if you already have, donate the state-supported portion of your tuition back to the school), don't use federal loan guarantees to get through school or purchase a house, don't deduct your house or school loan interest payments on your income tax, and lobby any church you my go to to pay full income taxes like all other businesses do.
Do all of that, and you'll have a lot of my respect.

You've lumped a variety of local, state, and federal taxes together here.
Mine was not a libertarian argument.
I don't mind paying taxes, e.g. for roads and libraries, where I choose and receive benefit.
I'm also not averse to, say, Massachuesetts implementing a state-wide health care mandate. Good on 'em.
The problem is that the further up the political org chart you go with a program, the harder it is to affect it with your political will.
Not to mention the fact that the 10th Amendment would seem a barrier to implementing something like Social Security.
Sure, I went to a service academy as an undergraduate, took a VA loan for some school, and another for a home loan (since converted to a standard mortgage).
You might even argue that my obligated service and continued servive to my country doesn't count, and I'm just skimming like everyone else.
Ultimately, I can't command even the tiniest shred of your respect.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[elrous0]

Every country but one in the entire industrialized world would seem to disagree. And considering how overpriced, overstrained, and underserved the system is in that one holdout, I think the majority has a point.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a result, it's perfectly obvious that US industry has stepped up to the plate and provided the US with the BEST broadband in the world, at the lowest prices. Ah pardon me but you need to get out more apparently. I can recall seeing multiple articles here about how the US being outmatched on broadband year after year. I am lazy and still at work so I'll cite the first ref. google gave me just to make the point.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143591-c,broadband/article.html

The private sector taking over space exploration at its current state is the real pipe dream. What needs to happen is a multi-government initiative to increase manned and unmanned missions to prove publicly that energy and mineral resources are in high abundance and within reach of current/future proven technologies. The private sector wont move past a snails pace till they see the other prospectors already heading for the asteroids.

Remember Manifest Destiny. It made sense a century ago. It will kill us if it continues unabated now that we've run out of room. But its the only thing that can truly guarantee our survival off of this planet.

Griffman

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[j1mmy]

i am generally opposed to the income tax and i'm well aware of it's shady constitutional justifications. since i'm stuck with it, i'd at least like to get my money's worth. i don't even get that.

i wouldn't mind paying a tenth of what i pay just to have a court system and a national defense. unfortunately, i'm paying much more than that for things i don't need or want, and even some things i strongly object to funding.

and, yes, it is self-serving. i don't know how you feel about paying for things you don't want or don't receive, but i don't particularly like it.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[JoshHeitzman]

Space exploration won't solve any of those problems. We can take all of the pictures and samples of the other planets and moons in our solar system that we want and it won't solve pollution, population pressure, or self-annihilation. For space to solve those issues we'd actually need to be colonizing it and exploiting its resources which private parties will do far more effectively and efficiently then the government will.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[turgid]

See, what you're missing is we need to spend all of the budget on the robotic exploration of space. Once day, when robots are as intelligent as humans, or more so, they be able to improve themselves, making better, newer robots.

Humans will have indirectly made themselves obsolete. All of these robots will be out there exploring. Us goo- and bone- bags can rot away and die. Our legacy will populate the galaxy.

Those old 1950's cartoons were right about one thing: that's why all of the aliens that came out of the flying saucers were robots. Their biological progenitors were unable to cross the vastness of space and were doomed to wither trapped at the bottom of a gravitational well by their own conceitedness.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Iron Condor]

Our legacy will populate the galaxy.

Why call it "legacy"? Why not call a being as good as (or even better than) yourself that you brought into being a ... "descendant"?

Our probes are packets of metal and silicates born of a planet made of metal and silicates by going though the intermediate step of biological life...

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[rk]

Your hypothesis that conceit generates gravity intrigues me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[turgid]

You're welcome. No fee necessary. The corollary, of course, is that if we alter the attitude of the human race will will be able to generate anti-gravity, thus enabling the construction of reactionless engines, and, dare I say it, the Warp Drive.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Grishnakh]

Sarcasm is frequently a very effective way of making a point, far more so than simply stating it outright.

The problem is that, frequently, readers are too stupid or gullible to recognize sarcasm. Of course, there's also instances where writers aren't clever enough to make it understood that their writing is sarcastic without making it stupidly obvious (which ruins the effect).

While the GP's writing wasn't exactly the best example of sarcasm I've ever seen, it should have still been pretty obvious given the subject matter and the general audience of Slashdot (people who would, or should, be knowledgeable about the state of broadband in different parts of the world). I believe that any Slashdot reader should already know that places like South Korea have cheaper and better broadband availability than the USA.

Telling people not to use sarcasm is, IMO, akin to telling people they shouldn't use humor in their writing, or telling people they shouldn't use "big words" in their writing. Don't blame the writer if your reading and comprehension skills aren't up to par.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Grishnakh]

The GP makes a common mistake that many others do: he confuses publicly-traded corporations with all companies, when they are only a subset. I'm guessing that the companies you listed are privately owned. Privately owned companies can do whatever the hell they want, within reason. If the owners want to forsake short-term profits in the interest of long-term gain, they can do that. If they want to be unprofitable and give away their profits to charity, they can even do that to an extent. Publicly-traded companies don't have this luxury. They're required to focus on short-term profits by their shareholders, and the threat of shareholder lawsuits if they don't.

I'm not really interested in ever starting a company that grows larger than 1 or 2 people, but if I were, there's no way I would ever allow it to become publicly traded, for precisely this reason.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dpilot]

I might mostly agree with you. But there are 2 real problems. First, if I'm the one being denied the service, either by the stupid corporation or the stupid government, I'm still being denied the service. Second, these days it seems that corporate stupidity isn't sufficiently punished. This kind of ties in with the first reason - if a stupid company denies me the service, too often they squat on a market and prevent someone else from fulfilling my need. Another aspect of this is that some companies have gotten so big that the government feels that they can't afford to allow corporate Darwinism to happen, because of the side-effects. Think Chrysler, or Bear Sterns, for a more recent example. Perhaps a died-in-the-wool libertarian would argue that proper government would never have allowed this situation to happen, but it has, we're here now, and we're stuck with it. IMHO sudden deregulation to a "libertarian paradise" starting from today's market would be even more disastrous than what we have, with corporations more powerful than governments, fully capable of distorting the laws of supply and demand, and adept at denying customers the information needed for a proper choice.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[bluefoxlucid]

You mean like stalling an impending depression for a couple years? This isn't even much of a depression anymore with all the tax breaks and economic stimulus... (contrast to pre-revolutionary France with massively high taxes and the poor/rich with no middle class or lower class, just the poverty stricken and the nobility).

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Grishnakh]

Don't #2 and #3 cancel each other out?

Seriously though, space exploration isn't going to help with any of these too much, at least not for a very long time.
1) We don't have anywhere near the technology or resources needed to send millions or billions of people off the earth's surface. We'd really need to build a space elevator or three before attempting any large-scale movement off people off the planet; the amount of rocket fuel needed to do this with today's tech would be ridiculous, and would make problem #1 far, far worse.
2) Wars are fought over resources, religion, and power. Space exploration only has the potential to help with one of those, and again, not any time too soon.
3) I don't see how, even if we found lots of valuable new resources in space, that #1 would be solved. While some pollution is caused by mining, lots more pollution is caused by the usage of resources, and disposal and byproducts of resources. Lots of pollution is caused by the burning of oil, for instance. Space exploration certainly isn't going to help that, since there's no oil in asteroids, and we don't have an infrastructure that could use alternative energy sources (like electricity for vehicles). We could certainly work on developing vehicles that use electricity, but that's a much smaller challenge than mining or colonizing space, and so far we seem to be too lazy to even bother with this small challenge.
4) Back to #2, people don't really want to live off-world. For all its flaws, earth, even the crappy parts, is still a much nicer place to live than in orbit, on the moon, etc. Gravity is normal, there's a breathable atmosphere, it's not too hard to grow food, water is generally available, etc. The amount of resources necessary to create livable habitats in space or on other planets/moons would be staggering, and even so would probably not work well. We tried Biosphere II and it was a failure.

Personally, I'm still a big proponent of space exploration, because 1) the spin-off technologies and 2) the potential for resource mining. The amount of solar energy available outside our atmosphere is astronomical, and some of this could be harnessed and sent to earth. There's also lots of valuable raw materials available on asteroids. And 3) it gives us humans something important to do with our time instead of sitting around watching WWF or Survivor. However, the problems you've listed above aren't going to be solved by space exploration; we have to find other ways of solving them. And I for one am not terribly hopeful that we will solve them, at least before some huge disaster happens. People are simply too greedy, short-sighted, and apathetic. Population is already proving to be a huge problem: there's lots of people starving to death now because of food shortages in developing countries, but do poor people ever think about using birth control and not having so many kids? Of course not, especially when their catholic priests tell them it's a sin.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Grishnakh]

Regardless, lets suppose we privatize space exploration, and a handful of entrepreneurs, with the gifts of great foresight and deep pockets, step forward. They make great strides. They drive the R&D for space-related tech, so they end up owning the spin-offs. They control the orbital research, so maybe they start amassing patents from that.

Now years down the road, space travel becomes really important, and they're poised to make a huge profit. Are we (as a society) prepared to let them profit for their decades of investment, or will we claim that this undeserving elite is trying to exploit our need from a position of unfair advantage?

If "years down the road" is greater than 20, then unless Congress changes patent law like they have copyright, all these valuable patents will have expired.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[frith01]

I never intended for space exploration to be seen as a SOLUTION to the problems listed.

Space exploration is a solution to the problem of all the eggs in one basket issue.

I was listing those items as intractable problems we now have that arent going to go away any time soon, and will get much worse before they get better.

The idea is not to move millions of persons off the earth, just to move enough folks to be self-sufficient & bio diverse to survive a few generations off the earth in case of the worst problems occur.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[syousef]

There are other things you should cut before space exploration.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Tablizer]

At the very least, space exploration drives technology development and brings its benefits back to the marketplace manyfold.

Many of such claims are a myth.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Tablizer]

There are additional critics that have watched NASA burn money furiously

Not any more than any other gov't agency. They've done some amazing things considering that they are a gov't agency.

put lots of expensive equipment into the ocean instead of space

The deep ocean is largely unexplored. Those missions are cheaper than space-shots. You could perhaps argue that such belongs to a different agency, but not that its not a worthy scientific goal.

while performing lots of military work that additionally invades privacy and puts weapons into the sky

They don't call those shots. Congress and the prez do.

They've also made themselves a political football

This is expected given their unique nature.

have engineering standards and production practices that killed astronauts

The shuttles are a fiasco in many ways. No argument there.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Moofie]

If you've got a plan to feed the world and provide universal health care for the cost of NASA's measly budget, I am dying to hear it.

Since I guarantee that you don't, I think you're making a silly argument.

Could NASA's funds be better managed? Absolutely. But Congress won't allow that.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Moofie]

The only one that matters is not.

How much tax revenue comes from business enabled by communications satellites? Compare that to NASA's budget.

Case closed.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[doom]

Grishnakh wrote:

Sarcasm is frequently a very effective way of making a point, far more so than simply stating it outright.

No, no, no. Sarcasm is mainly a great way of grinding your opponent's nose in their own stupidity, while trying to provoke flame wars. (At least, that's what I always use it for.)

The trouble with an idiom like sarcasm (or irony, or hyperbole, or...) is that you're literally not saying what you mean, and it relies on a high degree of knowledge on the part of the reader (presuming you're not going to resort to the execrable smiley face). So, sarcasm is usually a great way of telling someone something that they know already...

The problem is that, frequently, readers are too stupid or gullible to recognize sarcasm.

There are bad readers out there, and there are also a hell of a lot of bad writers, and sometimes you have both of them at the same time.

... it should have still been pretty obvious given the subject matter and the general audience of Slashdot (people who would, or should, be knowledgeable about the state of broadband in different parts of the world).

Ah yes. You expect people here to read the articles.

Telling people not to use sarcasm is, IMO, akin to telling people they shouldn't use humor in their writing, or telling people they shouldn't use "big words" in their writing.

Or that they shouldn't skateboard while writing code.

Don't blame the writer if your reading and comprehension skills aren't up to par.

Dude, I could identify it as a sarcasm misfire. Maybe I'm not the one with reading comprehension problems, eh?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Tablizer]

Communication satellites are mostly commercial adventures these days. Whether they would have happened without NASA, probably eventually, although 10/20 years later would be my guess.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you mean, and I'm not sure you do, critic rather than denier and advocate rather than apologist then you should find upon closer examination that almost every advocate is also a critic.

Except for those it's mostly yes-men, nay-sayers and imbeciles.

NASA got a brilliant chance with the Vision for Space Exploration but turned it into a carnage in process. If they don't change soon it will be suicide by incompetence and their credibility as an organization completely evaporates.

More than anything Congress needs to get real tough, indications are they might be preparing just that. Criminal negligence should be on the table, expect whistle-blowers.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should private companies receive funding? Doesn't that go against the spirit of private enterprise?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dpilot]

I'll pick a different one from communications satellites, where the government role is a bit clearer.

Weather satellites.

Remember when hurricanes struck with little warning? Perhaps as important as giving us a better picture of the current weather, weather satellites have given us the area coverage and data volume to make forecasting less snicker-worthy. Sure, cyclones, tornadoes, and other things happen, but I remember there being more "weather catastrophe with little warning" as a child than there is now.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[mdwh2]

3 things down here on the ground should be addressed first.

1) a replacement for oil so WW III might be averted
2) world wide weather/tsunami/hurricane/volcano warning system
3) permaculture food sources for the 3rd world

The way that everyone always brings up their list of pet priorities, only on these articles, anyone would think that space is the only thing the Government spends money on!

Why don't you post your list to every other article that talks about the Government doing something?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[elrous0]

I meet all but two of your criteria (roads and tax deductions)

You've never been to a public library?!?!?

Oh wait, I forgot. You're a Republican. Of course you've never been inside a library.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Bassman59]

Yes, but those tolls would not be taxes, they would be payments to entrepreneurs for services rendered. In the libertarian mindset, that's a MUCH different thing regardless of the relative magnitude of the costs. (In other words, being charged any amount a free-market provider is better than paying any amount by taxation for that same service, no matter what the relative costs.)

So once the free-market provider locks up all of the roads and it uses that monopoly status to double the toll, then what?

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dpilot]

Please don't mistake me for a libertarian. Though there are some aspects to it that I like, in general I think it's hopelessly naive.

Besides, the free market provider doesn't have to lock up all the roads, just the one that *I* live or need to drive on.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[dodobh]

The incumbent was government owned/sponsored, and the government forced local loop unbundling in both cases. The US has had neither happen.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[Shadowmist]

There are additional critics that have watched NASA burn money furiously

Not any more than any other gov't agency. They've done some amazing things considering that they are a gov't agency.

put lots of expensive equipment into the ocean instead of space

The deep ocean is largely unexplored. Those missions are cheaper than space-shots. You could perhaps argue that such belongs to a different agency, but not that its not a worthy scientific goal. I think the poster was referring to the fact that a number of space missions like Mariner 8 wound up taking unexpected landings into the ocean (and being destroyed) instead of arriving on target, or that miner matter of metrics/english confusion that caused one of our probes to HIT Mars instead of orbiting it.

Re:Conversly, where are the space critics?

[emanroga]

Then you take one of the small jet services or high-speed rail that becomes affordable due to increased volume and increased competitor prices. Or you telecommute because you're good at what you do, and your boss doesn't want to lose you or pay for your commute. Don't expect us all to stay put because you lack imagination. I see all these people who are for subsidizing hybrid cars and mass transit and taxing gasoline and against new highway projects and for carbon caps. Why go to all that trouble, when you can solve all the problems by auctioning off the freeway systems? Or maybe you just want everyone *else* to have to pay for their lifestyles while you get a free ride (pun intended).

It's simple, really...

[Pig Hogger]

The space advocates are not there because there's simply no room for it in the political universe...

Re:It's simple, really...

[dattaway]

Wars make more money. The media is all for it and against it. More companies are lobbying for war contracts than space contracts. That's where the money is. We went to the moon and didn't find oil.

Re:It's simple, really...

[explosivejared]

What we need are some big charts that say something along the lines of "Increased space funding shows historical link to lower gas prices." It's technically correct, the best kind of correct. We used to spend more on space. We used to have lower gas prices. Is anyone seriously worried that the public at large will understand correlation isn't causation or statistics at all. It would work, and you all know it would!

Re:It's simple, really...

[scorp1us]

Excerpted from RP2008, a discussion about charity, which in the limited usefulness of space exploration the space program is. I assume you could say it employs people, but those people would have no problem working other places as well.

If you had the right to give anything, the amount was simply a matter of discretion with you, and you had as much right to give $20,000,000 as $20,000. If you have the right to give at all; and as the Constitution neither defines charity nor stipulates the amount, you are at liberty to give to any and everything which you may believe, or profess to believe, is a charity and to any amount you may think proper. You will very easily perceive what a wide door this would open for fraud and corruption and favoritism, on the one hand, and for robbing the people on the other. 'No, Colonel, Congress has no right to give charity.'

"'Individual members may give as much of their own money as they please, but they have no right to touch a dollar of the public money for that purpose. If twice as many houses had been burned in this country as in Georgetown, neither you nor any other member of Congress would have Thought of appropriating a dollar for our relief. There are about two hundred and forty members of Congress. If they had shown their sympathy for the sufferers by contributing each one week's pay, it would have made over $13,000. There are plenty of wealthy men around Washington who could have given $20,000 without depriving themselves of even a luxury of life.'

Re:It's simple, really...

[hardburn]

Next time we see a hurricane forming weeks before it hits land, remember how "limited use" the space program is.

Re:It's simple, really...

[vertinox]

...until a meteor hits a major city. Then people will be asking why NASA didn't do anything even though they cut their budget to near nothing.

Re:It's simple, really...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wars make more money

Only in the most short-sighted way imaginable.

Wars destroy wealth, and shuffle it around. They do nothing to create wealth. Thus, with a war, there is less total wealth, but it's distributed differently than before, so to the profiteers, it seems like they "make money".

Re:It's simple, really...

[dattaway]

Wars destroy wealth, and shuffle it around.

Wars were also responsible for ARPANET, which is now our internet, which many claim has brought new wealth. The war industry is always coming out with new technology contracts. Its not just bullets and bombs, but the business models it creates. Many are making a killing off the non-killing part. Or something like that.

Re:It's simple, really...

[TapeCutter]

Talk to a proffesional fisherman or indead any seaman about the usefullness of GPS beacons and what the hell that has to do with underfunded levy banks.

Re:It's simple, really...

[scipiodog]

...until a meteor hits a major city. Then people will be asking why NASA didn't do anything even though they cut their budget to near nothing.

No, the scenario for when that happens was already established by 9/11:

Politicians will say that it was lack of tax dollars (rather than the waste thereof) that led to this, and will use it as an excuse to dramatically raise taxes, and about 5% of the increase will be spent on NASA. The rest will be spent on wars, useless bureaucracy, and lining certain people's pockets.

Anyone who even vaguely objects will be shouted down to the cries of "Do you want everyone to be killed by another meteor?" "Think of the children," and "We have to sacrifice some of our money if we want to be safe!"

The scary thing is, I can easily see this happening, and I can see people defending it vigorously.

Re:It's simple, really...

[Pig Hogger]

We went to the moon and didn't find oil.

Yes we did! There is oil on that moon...

Re:It's simple, really...

[hobo sapiens]

"Many are making a killing off the non-killing part."
Most players in the "war industry" are just suckling at the teat of the US taxpayers. I have a friend who works for a government contractor. Evidently, the DOD will not pay for a project without adequate research. Sounds reasonable, right? Well, there are a lot of companies that do endless R&D (on our dime, that is) with little intention of developing a product. It's a gravy train, and if you want a sure thing get on it. GP is right. Military waste isn't legendary for nothing. The military-industrial complex doesn't create wealth. Not at all to diminish the ARPANET and the fine folks who developed it, but I think inventions/discoveries of that magnitude are historical inevitabilities.

Re:It's simple, really...

[rbanffy]

Maybe we could go there and look for WMDs ;-)

Re:It's simple, really...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even need a meteor. Around 2009-2010, about a third of the US will experience near total loss of cell phone and GPS systems for 2-5 hours. It'll also play havok with power lines. So power down, cell phones not working, airplanes having trouble (as they shift more to GPS-like systems). Cause: coronal mass ejection. When it happens: not yet predictable.

Want some advance warning on this? Good reason to fund NASA, NSF, etc. The military is doing some research on it... using NASA dollars. The free market (such as airlines?)-- they're asking the gov't to give them the info for free. Not much time to build a free market space weather network even if you wanted it.

Good thing NASA has been looking ahead. Pity NASA didn't get involved in early climate warming studies... oh, wait, they did that too.

Go NASA!

(posted anon because I work at a military site)

Easier to be Against Things

[N8F8]

It's a lot easier to be against things than for them. That's politics. If you are "FOR" something you have to be willign to defend and justify it, repeatedly.

Re:Easier to be Against Things

[FooAtWFU]

It's a lot easier to be against things than for them. That's politics. If you are "FOR" something you have to be willign to defend and justify it, repeatedly. Willing, and able.

You'll need more than rhetoric about "it inspires the little kids into Science!" and "we need to get off Earth ASAP!!! zomg" lines. Also, the "it brings us new technologies, like Tang!" bit grows weak.

Re:Easier to be Against Things

[analog_line]

If you are "FOR" something you have to be willing to defend and justify it, repeatedly.

Yeah, we call that "the way things ought to work". Too often, however, things don't work like that. WAY too often, we have really great ideas that aren't defended or justified repeatedly, and therefore aren't thought through nearly as well. While I am not personally a "professional skeptic", if you take a position on ANYTHING you'd better be prepared to back it up with evidence if possible, and argument if there isn't any evidence yet (because no one's tried it, or it's impossible to test for one reason or another). Every assertion should be questioned repeatedly and mercilessly, especially ones that will end up transferring other people's resources into something that you think should be done. You know, such sterling examples of crappy ideas that didn't get argued against nearly enough, such as the Cultural Revolution, the second US invasion of Iraq, Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, Alan Greenspan's dropping the cost of borrowing to nothing.

If you have the resources to do something yourself, without outside help, then you don't really need to worry about questions, but don't expect anyone else to care much. If someone wants to go to space, I'm all for letting them, as long as they pay for it.

Re:Easier to be Against Things

[jcgf]

While I am not personally a "professional skeptic",

and

Every assertion should be questioned repeatedly and mercilessly

That's how I would define a "professional skeptic". Or did you mean that you don't get paid? Meaning you are an "amateur skeptic" as I am an "amateur radio operator"?

Re:Easier to be Against Things

[OldeTimeGeek]

Mod points always run out too early.

This isn't true in politics only - it's always harder to create than destroy.

Re:Easier to be Against Things

[analog_line]

By professional skeptic, I mean people like the Skeptic Society and the various other people that go around actively trying to disprove stuff. And as for amateur skeptic, I'm not one of those either. Questioning everything, even things you personally think are correct isn't limited to the UFOs, magical powers, or the existence of a deity. Moral systems aren't defined by the physical world in the way that planetary systems are (the sun isn't good or bad, it is). I've got a huge pile of unfinished arguments on my computer (because I'm not a professional) against the philosophical and moral positions of the "skeptic community" that have nothing to do with the good, helpful, and necessary science work that they base those positions.

I guess technically I would fall under the dictionary definition of skeptic, but that word has more political, social, and moral overtones than just what's in the dictionary, and I don't fall into that mold.

Re:Easier to be Against Things

[dpilot]

I beg to differ.

It's possible and much easier to be "for" things in the Mom-and-apple-pie fashion, yet do nothing to back up that stand.

To be against something immediately alienates some group of people.

Come to think of it that can be put the other way around, too.

There are things that being "against" is Mom-and-apple-pie, like today's Republicans and abortion. Taking a pro-choice stand immediately alienates that group.

Still, I think Obama has taken the less popular stand on this position. I happen to disagree with his stand on this, too. I applaud his goal, but I'd rather see the money come from somewhere else.

Terrorism won't inspire your kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are all sorts of uses for math and science when it comes to stopping terrorism or spying on your neighbors.

Re:Terrorism won't inspire your kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Name one.

Re:Terrorism won't inspire your kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there's some really neat ways of finding chemical/biological/nuclear weapons (or things that look like weapons).

Key Difference

[eldavojohn]

As we enter a new "Space Nexus" like we did after Apollo, now is a critical time to let your representatives know how you feel about space exploration, and yet no-one has anything to say. I can't listen to the podcast as I'm at work but I think the key difference now is that people are, on average, more informed about how difficult the logistics are of space travel ... and also about the risks that come with that. On top of that most of us have witnessed the Challenger and Colombia incidents.

That's not to say that early flight didn't have its fair share of mishaps and deaths but I think it's getting to the point where the only advocates I see for space are those who want it turned over to the private sector. The private sector is a good answer when it's too complicated/expensive/morally questionable for a government.

It's become pretty clear that travel or tourism has been given to the private sector (as I believe the Russians have given that up) while 'exploration' and 'colonization' are probably still the government's responsibility.

I'm all for exploration and research-y type things in space but I'm not so sure about colonization or travel yet. I used to be very pro-colonizing other planets after reading a lot of Carl Sagan but now if I were to write my representatives it would be asking them to save Earth first then think about colonization and travel.

Re:Key Difference

[Volante3192]

On top of that most of us have witnessed the Challenger and Colombia incidents.

Apollo 1 didn't stop us...why should Columbia and Challenger?

Re:Key Difference

[pdwalker]

...but now if I were to write my representatives it would be asking them to save Earth first then think about colonization and travel. If you truly are serious about wanting to save the earth, then going into space is the best way to do it.

The the riches from energy and resources alone will do more to alleviate any problems here on Earth than anything you could possibly even attempt on Earth itself.

Re:Key Difference

[bsDaemon]

Apollo was the generation of The Duke... this is the generation of Kevin Bacon.

We don't even let kids play dodge ball in school anymore, then we wonder why we're losing wars.

Frankly, I think America has become pussified, and it happened by design.

Re:Key Difference

[cthulu_mt]

More importantly it was the generation of Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Anzio and Normandy.

They knew what sacrifice was.

Re:Key Difference

[elrous0]

The amount of resources, time, and energy we would have to expend to maintain a sustainable biosphere on earth are several orders of magnitude less that it would take to travel to a distant planet and establish a whole new biosphere from scratch in an environment that doesn't even possess a survivable atmosphere.

Re:Key Difference

[bsDaemon]

Precisely. We lost more people landing on D-Day than we have in 5 years in Iraq. Vastly more.

It was also during Vietnam. I suspect that most people figured that 3 astronauts dying for the cause of advancing human knowledge and reach was worth a lot more than what more people were dying for in indochina.

It's all about perspective. The fact is that we now handle people with kid gloves until they're 30, and then some. No risk is acceptable anymore, which is why we haven't really had anything to show for it in so long.

Where there congressional hearings after the Apollo 1 fire? I don't know -- but they sure dragged out after Columbia, as if Congress can fix an engineering problem. They can't even fix the voting system (not that they'd want to...).

It's tragic, really. Fear over every little thing. "Oh noes!! dirty bombs!!" -- take an iodide tablet and shut up. People would get more radiation exposure flying across country, but just try and convince them of it...

If we as a society are no longer willing to take risks, then we just have to accept that we are not going to get anymore huge payoffs.

Personally, I'm not willing to accept it.

Re:Key Difference

[turing_m]

Perhaps part of the trouble of modern war is that it preferentially kills the brave (and foolish). The more modern wars you have, the less people left who are happy to accept conscription.

So for having these "great" wars in the first place, we are left with all the cautious people, all the rear echelon/ draft dodgers who thought that copping a bullet storming some beach in Europe or Asia for the sake of someone you've never met, or worse, an ideology - was a generally bad idea. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

An energy crisis is liable to bring a more callous attitude towards life and death. It might even select for longer-term, sustainable thinking. Here's hoping.

Re:Key Difference

[Karrde45]

And yet building a small biosphere on another world would give us invaluable data on how to protect and develop a biosphere. We could get data in a situation where we control all the variables, without having to guess whether todays rain is the result of El Nino or La Nina or some other phenomenon. That data would help us learn what's really going on with our home planet. How is trying to control the atmosphere of an entire planet with 6+ billion people on it several orders of magnitude easier than setting up a biosphere for 100 people on the moon? Fixing earth's problems doesn't have to be mutually exclusive with manned space exploration.

Re:Key Difference

[elrous0]

No one has ever even figured out how to set up a working independent biosphere here on earth. Maybe we should focus on that much simpler task before we go off building moonbases.

Re:Key Difference

[Pig Hogger]

Precisely. We lost more people landing on D-Day than we have in 5 years in Iraq. Vastly more.

And we lost more people in traffic accidents than all world wars, Viêt-Nàm and Irak wars.

Re:Key Difference

[Anonymous Coward]

it's too complicated/expensive/morally questionable Sounds like a pretty good description of just about any war.

Re:Key Difference

[moeinvt]

"We lost more people landing on D-Day than we have in 5 years in Iraq. Vastly more."

I think you're wrong on that point. I assume that the "We" pertains to U.S./Allied forces as opposed to German/Axis forces.("landing" indicates that perspective)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Normandy
U.S. Casualties: 1,465 dead, 5,138 wounded, missing or captured;
Total Allied Casualties: 10,264 (dead, wounded, missing or captured)

Compared with the most recent Iraq war casualty reports for U.S. military: >4000 dead, >25,000 wounded.

Re:Key Difference

[bsDaemon]

I'm not defending the Iraq war. I'm just saying that on the scale of national tragedy, the number of dead soldiers doesn't even really register. The terrible leadership we have that got us into the mess in the first place is the bigger tragedy.

Kennedy may have gotten us into Vietnam, but at least he also gave us the inspiration to go to the moon - statim.

"we choose to go to the moon, and do these other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard" is a far cry from no child left behind (the only way that works, is if no one else gets to go forward).

The standards for success/victory in America are so low these days that minor failures seem even more egregious by comparison. It's all about scale.

In a little over a month I'll be 24. I already don't have it as good as I did when I was 12, and unless things drastically change, I cannot assume that my children will have it as easy as my parents expected that I would.

All of that which is my fault, I am changing -- getting another degree in MechE (majoring in English is good for learning how to talk to girls, but when you can't afford to marry one, it doesn't really matter...), for starters.

However, it doesn't change the fact that free trade, outsourcing, and stupid leadership from the doped-up baby-boomer generation has seriously run the ship of state aground.

Sometimes I think the best way to deal with the government is just to ignore them until they go away.

Re:Key Difference

[bsDaemon]

Of course, if I were German I would be compelled to say "greated vastly more liberators with tea and cakes," lest I risk a prison sentence.

Re:Key Difference

[Pig Hogger]

I'm not defending the Iraq war. I'm just saying that on the scale of national tragedy, the number of dead soldiers doesn't even really register. The terrible leadership we have that got us into the mess in the first place is the bigger tragedy.

To put things in perspective, do we say that Roosevelt/Truman were better leaders than Shrub Jr. given the number of dead soldiers under their watch?

Or is it the goal of the war that sets the acceptable casualty rate?

Re:Key Difference

[bsDaemon]

Iraq was not a real threat to the United States. Therefore, "just war theory" does not come into play.

We have also gained neither treasure nor territory. Without spoils, conquest is also nil.

I can therefore think of no legitimate reason why we are in Iraq, expending money, lives and resources, for absolutely no tangible benefit to the United States.

It's a tragedy when soldiers die, sure. However, when they die for nothing, it's a travesty and that is what we have now.

FDR was alright as a war leader (his fiscal policy may or may not have prolonged the depression). Truman put the boot down to end WW2, but fucked up Korea. Korea is a lot like Iraq in that way, but at least a valid case can be made for checking Soviet expansion, directly or by proxy.

We have in Iraq unseated a secular leader whom Bin Laden himself hated, and instead opened up a vacuum for sectarian extremism to take hold. We fucked up bad.

canidates stances

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

Hillary: enhance American leadership in space, including:
Pursuing an ambitious 21st century Space Exploration Program, by implementing a balanced strategy of robust human spaceflight, expanded robotic spaceflight, and enhanced space science activities.
Developing a comprehensive space-based Earth Sciences agenda, Promoting American leadership in aeronautics by reversing funding cuts to NASA's and FAA's aeronautics R&D budget.

Barack: Obama's early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years

McCain: When asked about their candidates' positions on the moon-Mars project, a spokeswoman for Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) did not respond.

All of this can be found at Space dot com.

Re:canidates stances

[elrous0]

Hillary Clinton would promise chocolate milk the in the water fountains if it got her elected. Whether she has any intention of actually ever delivering on such bold promises is HIGHLY suspect. And it's a moot point anyway, now. Her campaign is already floating dead in space.

Re:canidates stances

[Kamokazi]

Wow. That's the first thing Hilary has said that I like.

Of course, whether or not this is yet another one of her statments where she was just saying what the crowd wanted to hear and probably has no plans to follow through is another matter entirely.

McCain's spokesperson probably didn't respond because she probably didn't know for certain. I would be willing to bet he's going to try and at least see it through on a normal schedule, since Bush had been pushing it. Could be wrong though.

Re:canidates stances

[Sciros]

So..
Hillary: pro (for now)
Obama: against
McCain: mysterious

I'm not one to really take any positivie promises from politicians at face value prior to an election, so the only response I take seriously there is Obama's... and I can't say I'm happy with it :-/

Re:canidates stances

[garett_spencley]

I'm a huge space geek and it's a life-long dream of mine to get into space.

However, even under the assumption that Clinton is telling the complete truth and has every intention of keeping those promises I still prefer Obama's position. Simply because space exploration is not something that is going to directly affect me and the quality of my life and those that I love. Not in the next 4 years anyway.

As a parent I am, however, keenly interested in the quality of early education. I am also interested in taxes, the economy, health care, law and all of those things that actually directly affect how I live on a day to day basis.

I am dreamer and I want to get to space badly. But I also want a higher quality of life for myself and my loved ones. Space exploration is not going to accomplish that in the near future.

Disclaimer - I'm not even American so you can disregard everything that I just said as being completely irrelevant. However, I am a Canadian who does business in the US so if it's worth anything your country's political affairs do affect me. If I could vote in both countries I would, but I would need a residence in the US for a certain number of years to apply for dual-citizenship.

Re:canidates stances

[JWW]

That's what worries me so much about Obama. He's going to encourage kids to go into Math and Science by .... cutting the premier science program that our government is funding.

On the University level we are seeing good students avoid Math and Science careers LIKE THE PLAGUE. Obama's efforts in education will all be for naught as the good students all go into medicine or law (there can never be enough lawyers right?) Students RIGHT NOW think there will be nothing to do with a career in math or science, when they see Obama cutting the biggest government science and technology program there is American kids will continue to RUN AWAY from math and science, no matter how much money is poured into education.

We have lost our vision and spirit of adventure/exploration. I'm becoming more and more convinced that we're just going to sit here on Earth until our times up. Fermi was wrong, there may be all kinds of intelligent life in the galaxy, but if they're as shortsighted as we seem to be its very likely that they just sat on their ass and stopped exploring until they died out.

Re:canidates stances

[lubricated]

I wouldn't call Hillary pro, unless she doesn't just spit out bullshit, but also actually proposes how she intends to pay for it.

Re:canidates stances

[Anonymous Coward]

So who was the fourth "Major candidate"? If TFA is by some Ron Paul fantasy-land kook then the required grain of salt will be much larger (should I ever choose to listen to it.)

Re:canidates stances

[Anonymous Coward]

As a parent I am, however, keenly interested in the quality of early education.

As a happily childfree person who never intends to have children, and who has had a lifelong fascination with space and feels that the space program is incredibly valuable... I agree completely about the importance of quality early education.

A strong public education system is the foundation of a functional self-governing society.

Besides, the space exploration needs to be thinking long term-- in terms of decades and centuries (in some respects, even millennia)-- not just in terms of the next three or four years. Strengthening the public education system today is very important to the strength of the space program twenty years from now.

It seems that so many people who want to de-emphasize or even abolish the public education system also frequently lament the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. Hmmmmm..... want their cake and it it too, much?

(Sorry for the AC, already used mod points upthread)

Re:canidates stances

[mattnyc99]

Nice new expert comparo btw Obama, McCain (and Hillary) on space policies here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/air_space/4260504.html?series=46

Re:canidates stances

[sm62704]

There are five I know of, and probably more. But perhaps the submitter is counting Hillary out; it certainly looks as if Obama will be the Democratic candidate. Then there is the Republican candidate, the Libertarian candidate, and the Green candidate. The Libertarians were on the ballot in 49 states the last two elections.

There are at least two other parties here, the Communists and Socialists.

If the mainstream media wasn't owned, operated, and controlled by the corporatti, and the US cogernment wasn't likewise Owned, operated, and controlled by the corporatti, the Libertarinans at least, and propably the Greens as well, would be party to the debates. The Libertarians are, after all on enough ballots that they have a methmatical chance of winning; or would, if the mainstream dared mention them and what they stood for. The Greens may as well, I'm not certain.

You, sir, have been brainwashed by your rich corpotate mammon-worshiping masters. Me, I still have a dirty mind.

-mcgrew

Re:canidates stances

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with this viewpoint is that if you defer Constellation for 5 years, you're going to lose a huge base of support personnel and expertise from the current manned program. You can't just reboot these programs overnight, as our experience with Saturn V shows.

Sure, the people will still be out there, somewhere, but they're going to be doing different things. A lot of the money that NASA's burned over the years has been to pretty much preserve the manned spaceflight capability, with little other purpose. It seems foolish to fritter that away now.

Re:canidates stances

[boris111]

I believe education should be exclusively controlled by the state. Pennsylvania has one of the strictest teaching certification programs in the country. Many out of staters will certify in PA so they're certified in other states. PA does not accept certification from other states, however many states will accept certification for PA. I believe education would improve nation wide if more states followed Pennsylvania's model.

Re:canidates stances

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone gives a crap about you love-fest hippies, your made-up words, or your equal-opportunity presidential nominees, since as of today there are but three people who could feasibly win in November. No, they aren't Greens, Libertarians, Communists, Socialists, or Chuck Norris. Fringe candidates don't stand a chance at winning no matter how much coverage they get, since they are *FRINGE CANDIDATES* and not enough people want them to win. If you want to be president you have to win a popularity contest, this is something that fringe kids either don't get or refuse to acknowledge, since they are generally either bad at it or have never tried. Get over it while you still can.

Re:canidates stances

[Nyeerrmm]

I know that its a well thought out position that I get the feeling she would follow through on. I can't cite any particular sources, but I did get to hear her space/science advisor speak at an AAS conference last year, and while she may not be particularly passionate about it, she has people working for her who are, and I imagine that they'd keep her honest on it. Especially since this was last November when she was still a clear frontrunner, and not desperate to say anything to get her ahead.

Note that I say this as a likely McCain supporter.

Re:canidates stances

[rrohbeck]

Amen. That sounds so politician-ese, balanced and correct that it was probably worded by a campaign committee. As in, "Ugh, space? Of course, we're all for it. Quick, get a statement out!"

Re:canidates stances

[acheron12]

by implementing a balanced strategy of robust human spaceflight, expanded robotic spaceflight, and enhanced space science activities. Ah ... balanced, robust, expanded, enhanced ... with words like these, who needs details?

Re:canidates stances

[bluefoxlucid]

As someone who utterly despises kids, adults are worse. More kids need to be beat, schools need to be better, teachers need to have the balls to tell parents to take their kids to another school if they don't want them disciplined for misbehavior, and kids need to whine a hell of a lot about being removed from their friends and decide to sit down and shut up and follow the rules. I'm tired of asshole kids turning into asshole adults, beat them with a stick while they're young.

That being said, the best school systems around here have the least funding. The best funded school systems have the worst record. Why? Because they cry they need funding, then tie up $13000 per student-year (YES, THAT'S THOUSANDS) in administrative overhead somehow. Meanwhile schools on $5000 or even $3000 per student-year practice fiscal responsibility rather than pork-barrel politics.

State-run the schools. Our state tried to assume control of the worst school system here, and the city that ran the school system went nuts; then the legislature blocked the governor from doing so by passing a law banning the state from interfering with local school districts. I would have cut their funding and moved it to the surrounding counties, let the students bus out of the city to get a proper education instead of rotting away in the slums like they are now.

Re:canidates stances

[Tablizer]

He's going to encourage kids to go into Math and Science by

Why should we encourage such? It results in careers with little upward mobility and risk of being offshored to where Phd's cost $3/hour. I only suggest somebody pursue such careers if they personally like it, not because it brings in any big bucks or stability.

Re:canidates stances

[sm62704]

The Corporatti want you to believe that any vote not cast for a Democrat or a Republican is a wasted vote. The result is people staying home.

The reason the corporatti and the media they own (aka MSM) want you to believe that no party but the Republicans and Democrats matter is because it's cheaper for you, mr anonymous corporatii (or corporate stooge, since you're anonymous I don't know which) to bribe with campaign contributions. Because a big anough contribution gurantees access to the legistator. Bribe both and your bases are covered.

The Republicans and Democrats want marijuana, gambling, and prostitution outlawed. I'd be a fool to vote for them; I'd be voting against my own interests.

The Planetary Society

[Tisha_AH]

There is an advocacy group for space exploration.

http://www.planetary.org/home/

The Planetary Society has excellent programs and pushes for further exploration of space.

If you are really interested, join. I really had an interest in the solar sail to propel probes into deep space.

Big science - don't have to go to space.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of 2 big science issues.

1) Fusion.
    1a) The unintended effects of fusion on the biosphere and how to fix 'em.
2) The study of biology.
    2a) What man does not know about the the effects of what your grandparents/parents did and how you became a human is only being hinted at. What we do not know about the chemistry from conception to birth is only, again, hinted at with what research has been done.

Fusion would be the next 'energy source upgrade' (that or the theorized zero point) and being able to 'upgrade' or 'fix' humans sure sounds a whole heck of a lot bigger than a rocket.

Re:Big science - don't have to go to space.

[Anonymous Coward]

To cast it in cliched literary terms this is the difference between male-female, West-East thinking. One looking outwards projecting fear or conquest, the other being inward looking and nurturing.

Right now I think the human race needs a major dose of the Eastern philosophy. Space can wait. it isn't going anywhere. All the problems we need to sort out are right here on Earth. Energy, sustainability (especially agriculture), medicine , population control, leadership quality (stop war crazed psychopaths gaining control).

People confuse space exploration with Earthly exploration. Pioneering explorers came back with new plants, new minerals, made contact with other races (and usually wiped them out). But space isn't like that. Start Trek has addled our understanding. Space costs a bloody fortune to launch a few kilograms into orbit. It's mostly of interest to insane military types who get all moist at the thought of putting weapons there, and apart from spinoff technology it can yield little of value until we have already fusion energy sources.

Re:Big science - don't have to go to space.

[eln]

Why do people always think solving problems on Earth means you have to ignore space? We are a huge country, and an even bigger planet, with lots of resources. We have enough brainpower and enough resources to take on Earthly problems while still putting more effort into exploring space. Trying to find a cure for cancer does not mean we have to stop trying to find a cure for AIDs.

Our problem has never been lack of resources, it's poor allocation of those resources.

Re:Big science - don't have to go to space.

[FooAtWFU]

The "other" energy source upgrade in these parts would be some sort of deep drilling for geothermal. Some sort of "singularity engine" black hole deal is also theoretically possible. But zero-point energy is ridiculous.

Re:Big science - don't have to go to space.

[The_Wilschon]

the theorized zero point Zero point energy as an energy source has never been theorized except by crackpots who like the way the words sound and don't understand any of the science that is denoted by the words. Zero point energy as a phenomenon is much more than theorized, it is quite well experimentally verified. And the experiments match up with the theory particularly in regards to the utter ludicrousness of the idea of using it as an energy source.

Zero point energy is the non-zero amount of energy that remains in a vacuum. A vacuum, mind you, being a region of space that is as empty as space can be made to be. In other words, the zero-point energy is precisely that energy that you can't get out of space. Oh when will this dumb myth finally die? It's almost as bad as cold fusion!

Re:Big science - don't have to go to space.

[bluefoxlucid]

Cold fusion being fusion spurred on by a catalyst causing a low activation energy, like collecting hydrogen in a sink such as that used to store propane densely and then compressing it with lasers rather than a full on fission blast?

Re:Big science - don't have to go to space.

[The_Wilschon]

Cold fusion refers to D-D fusion consistently occurring at an interaction energy of a few eV. Primarily, though, I was seeking to evoke the general public view that cold fusion is this magical goose that lays golden eggs and has been shut up by the government and some big science conspiracy.

PARAGRAPHS!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, that 2nd link. If we get a space advocate, can we at least get one who writes in NORMAL PARAGRAPHS???

"all four major presidential candidates"

[Gigiya]

Who is the fourth?

Re:"all four major presidential candidates"

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

has to be ron paul

Re:"all four major presidential candidates"

[Smidge204]

Probably either Ron Paul or Al Gore, depending on if your wingnut has right- or left-handed threads.

(Honestly don't know, though... technically there's any number of independents this could refer to...)
=Smidge=

Re:"all four major presidential candidates"

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect to the libertarian nut-freaks, Ron Paul isn't "major" by a long way; he's a fringe candidate.

Re:"all four major presidential candidates"

[njfuzzy]

There isn't a fourth. The OP is a nut of some sort, or has a silly agenda.

Re:"all four major presidential candidates"

[cthulu_mt]

Ralph Nader...?

At this point he has my vote just based on the disgust I feel for either of the Dems and McCain.

Maybe we should declare war on it.

[Gldm]

That seems to be the way to get lots of funding these days. At least if we declared The War on Space we'd be sure to find weapons of mass destruction. There are nuclear fusion reactions all over the place in space, they don't even try to hide em!

Me, I'm to busy worrying about if I can find another job, if I can ever afford a place to live, if I'll ever have the "special" right to marry my husband like we did in his country, if riots will break out when gas hits $10/gal next year...

Re:Maybe we should declare war on it.

[hypergreatthing]

The orion project was intended for space travel, not lifting capacity. Make the distinction between real space ships and lifting ships. If you have a space ship that never enters atmophere, it can be a hell of a lot better designed for pure space travel instead of lifting/descent into atmosphere.

Yes, the four major presidential candidates!

[Alsee]

(1) Barack Obama
(2) Hillary Clinton
(3) John Mccain
(4) Cowboy Neil

-

Re:Yes, the four major presidential candidates!

[DragonTHC]

I was just going to comment on that. I don't think Nader is running this year.

Re:Yes, the four major presidential candidates!

[Anonymous Coward]

all four major presidential candidates.
(1) Barack Obama
(2) Hillary Clinton
(3) John Mccain
(4) Al Gore

Space is unimportant

[japandegreeinit]

With so much going on terrestrially, there is no room for something as wasteful as space exploration. So far it has not fed the hungry, housed the homeless, or created peace for warring nations. Space exploration is a waste of time until we get things right down here, plain and simple. The space race was only important to the development of ICBM's. That is it! Face it, you are never going to find that alien girlfriend you want. Let the hate mail begin...

Re:Space is unimportant

[vrai]

We will never get things right down here because no two people can agree on what is "right". Using your reasoning we should therefore cease all technological development until a consensus is reached on what needs "fixing". Better we use our finite resources to further Man's knowledge of the universe than waste them on a pipe dream of global unity and happiness.

Starvation, deprivation and warfare are a old as humanity. We will never be fully rid of them, short of killing all but one person and hoping they're not schizophrenic.

Re:Space is unimportant

[japandegreeinit]

This is not flamebait, this is simple logic. Studying blackholes takes away billions that could be used on finding new eco-friendly energy sources. The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa. Calling this flamebait is simply a copout not being able to argue the counter position logically. Space exploration is a waste of real resources that are needed here. What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing. By the way, you are the only person I have heard of who thinks that we cannot get two people to agree on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or trying to spread peace. But then hey, everyone has the right to an opinion. Just so we sure on that, that right did not come from space exploration, but an exploration here on earth.

Re:Space is unimportant

[Rycross]

Studying blackholes takes away billions that could be used on finding new eco-friendly energy sources. The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa.

Throwing money at a problem doesn't necessarily fix it faster or even fix it at all. Africa's problems haven't been fixed by throwing money at it. Their problems are mostly political and somewhat aggravated by our trade and economic policies in the first world. I haven't seen any evidence or reasoning that throwing NASA's budget at the problem would help.

Eco-friendly energy had been traditionally killed by the NIMBY problem, politics, and cost-effective technology. Now that the technology has improved and the environment is being put in greater focus, we're starting to see more of a push towards greener technology. I don't see how applying NASA's budget towards this could have helped, especially since NASA is one of the very few organizations left with blue-skies research programs, which are needed for more forward-thinking developments.

Again, more money does not mean more improvement. Look up the "Law of Diminishing Returns," or maybe take a course in economics.

Space exploration is a waste of real resources that are needed here. What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing.

A better understanding of the universe is what drives scientific and technological development. I personally think GPS and satellite communication is pretty darn useful. The problem with blue-skies research is that you never know if you're going to run into dead-ends or come across the next big breakthrough. I'm guessing there were plenty of people who didn't see the value in quantum physics research, but its certainly been a great boon to mankind.

By the way, you are the only person I have heard of who thinks that we cannot get two people to agree on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or trying to spread peace.

Yeah people agree if you simplify the question to the point of ridiculousness. Now ask those two people how they would like to go about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or spreading peace. I'm pretty sure they'll have very different opinions on the matter. You have some people who like to focus on handouts, and other people who would rather focus on "teach a man to fish" methods like the OLPC.

But then hey, everyone has the right to an opinion. Just so we sure on that, that right did not come from space exploration, but an exploration here on earth.

I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive. Well, I guess it is if you have an overly simplistic, zero-sum view of the world. Luckily a lot of people don't have that problem.

Or would you like to provide evidence that the few billion we put into space research would make a real dent at any of the worlds problems (which are, again, mostly political)? As it is now, your argument is entirely emotion-based.

Re:Space is unimportant

[ardor]

Don't touch the space program. Cut military funds. Even 1% of the military budget is more than you could ever get from destroying and forbidding space exploration.

Space exploration isn't the huge money sink. The military is. The Iraq war alone costs over 20 times more than NASA's budget. So go and argue against senseless wars and DoD contracts for yet more deadly weapons.

Re:Space is unimportant

[Chibi Merrow]

Your ignorance is astounding. That alone is not entirely surprising or disheartening, but what really has me depressed is the fact that I know there's probably hundreds of thousands of people out there who think just like you and will happily destroy useful research and progress for the sake of "helping humanity".

Let me be a geek and dissect you piece by piece for a bit...

This is not flamebait, this is simple logic.

Emphasis mine. One of those words describes your "argument" rather well. It also describes you rather succinctly. The other word has little to do with you or the diarrhea of the mouth/keyboard you seem to be suffering from. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which.

Studying blackholes takes away billions that could be used on finding new eco-friendly energy sources.

Interesting. "Studying black holes" in particular generally does not take "billions", at least not on a yearly basis. That's done mostly with computer simulation and radio telescopes, the cost of which is spread out nicely over their long life spans. And funnily enough, theoretical physics research of that sort leads nicely into exotic "clean" power production research. Granted that's a tree that probably won't bear fruit in yours or my lifetime, but when/if it does it will as big of a chance to the human race as tool use was for our ancestors, perhaps even more. The fact that you'd even compare those two things makes me wonder if I'm just falling for a really clever troll...

The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa.

You realize these costs are not mutually exclusive, don't you? You realize that understanding how the climate of Mars has changed helps us better understand how our own climate may behave in the future and better deal with problems like desertification? You realize that two the Mars rovers didn't cost $1billion combined? And have probably provided us more knowledge on Mars' climate history than the sum total of all missions before them? Meanwhile we send billions in aid to Africa every year and (at least the way the news paints it) it only gets worse there every day...

Calling this flamebait is simply a copout not being able to argue the counter position logically.

It's hard to counter an illogical person who's argument is driven by emotion with logic, as said person generally does not bother to recognize the logic they are being presented with.

Space exploration is a waste of real resources that are needed here.

Can you point to what resources are being wasted on space exploration and are therefore not available to humanitarian efforts? And don't say money--we spend more money on humanitarian aid EVERY YEAR than we did the previous year, and see less for it. Meanwhile the trend for the past three decades has been to spend less on space every year, and yet our rate of return just keeps going up...

What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing.

This. Right here. This almost leaves me speechless. That you could actually believe that a greater understanding of how the Universe works is not in itself beneficial is mind boggling. It's infuriating. It makes me wonder if I'm just being trolled really hard, except I know that there are others out there like you. How can you be so blind?

Even ignoring for a moment why knowing how the FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE is put together is beneficial, you certainly can't be ignorant of all the advances in the sciences that have come from the space program that daily improve people's lives? What we've gained in material sciences alone is incredible. The medical field has benefited enormously, as well. You want to purify water in Africa? Where do you think the cutting edge research is being done in water purification and recycl

Re:Space is unimportant

[varcher75]

The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa.

Except it wont. About every space critic has always been saying this "money spent in space could be spent solving X, Y or Z" (insert here worthy causes). But it wouldn't be. Every penny siphoned out of NASA's budget would end up in making another frigate for a task force here or another Homeland Security bypass of constitution, or something that is already being done.

Health? The insurance lobby will not let you spend on making universal health coverage. Homeless? Where's the housing industry lobby... ahhh, there's little groups large enough to lobby actively on the building industry, and those large enough are interested in making big 2x8-lanes bridges, not making cheap houses.

At least, with NASA funding, you sometimes get worthy fallout industries, rather than useless boondoggles that prop this or that congressman's county for the next 4 years, until they go bankrupt as the federal funding shifts.

Re:Space is unimportant

[jcgf]

If you think that everyone agrees on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or trying to spread peace you sir have not been to a republican convention.

What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing.

I don't need no understanding.

It's ironic that one of your examples was purifying water. Guess who researches that?
  http://www.nasa.gov/missions/science/f_water.html

Re:Space is unimportant

[denzacar]

This is not flamebait, this is simple logic. Umm... Yes it is. And you yourself testified to that with your prophesied expectations of hate mail...

I am not sure how it is on your planet of origin, but here on Earth when person A starts a discussion praising X and person B comes along and comments something like "Fuck X, who needs it anyway?!" - that is not only a troll and flamebait, that is a call for physical damage to person B's face.

What does having a better understanding of the universe get us, nothing. Go watch documentaries entitled "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" before you ask that question again, knowing that those fine young Americans and John McClane have given their lives to protect the life on this planet.

By the way, you are the only person I have heard of who thinks that we cannot get two people to agree on feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, or trying to spread peace. You have obviously arrived to this planet only recently, right?
Or you would have known that both former Soviet Union and United States of America agreed on all of the above long ago.
Only problem was should the food, shelter and peace be provided by working for private sector and then buying it yourself according to your spending abilities or working for the country and getting one-kind-government-approved provided to every one.
You know, Mac and Coke not every one could afford every day or borscht every one would eat every day.
Oh, the hilarity that ensued over THAT.

But then hey, everyone has the right to an opinion. Just so we sure on that, that right did not come from space exploration, but an exploration here on earth. OK. So... Its OK then, since you are not for these new rights all of us will get (like "A Right To Eat Cookies" and "A Right On Your Own Orion Slave Girl") when we get to explore the space - to not give these rights to you and your offspring?
I am so making a time capsule of your post above for my great-great-great-great-great-grandson.
He is going to be so pleased with a chance to make maybe a whole town of people stuck in the 20th century on Earth while everyone else is going to the stars.

Be proud. You have just created the Amish of the future.
Oh... and please, have many children. Don't disappoint my offspring.

Re:Space is unimportant

[japandegreeinit]

I am sorry, but the second you used Deep impact and Armageddon as part of your argument you lost all credibility.

Re:Space is unimportant

[bluefoxlucid]

This is not flamebait, this is simple logic. Studying blackholes takes away billions that could be used on finding new eco-friendly energy sources. The billions wasted on finding water on Mars could be spent on purifying water in Africa.

DIGITAL IMAGING BREAST BIOPSY SYSTEM - The LORAD Stereo Guide Breast Biopsy system incorporates advanced Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs) as part of a digital camera system. The resulting device images breast tissue more clearly and efficiently. Known as stereotactic large-core needle biopsy, this nonsurgical system developed with Space Telescope Technology is less traumatic and greatly reduces the pain, scarring, radiation exposure, time, and money associated with surgical biopsies. Hmm, studying black holes helps cure cancer apparently.

ENRICHED BABY FOOD - A microalgae-based, vegetable-like oil called Formulaid developed from NASA-sponsored research on long duration space travel, contains two essential fatty acids found in human milk but not in most baby formulas, believed to be important for infants' mental and visual development. Well, it's not feeding the hungry, unless you count hungry babies. And this only taught us how to make the babies grow up not-stupid, so if you want stupid leaders just ignore this.

WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEM - NASA-developed municipal-size water treatment system for developing nations, called the Regenerable Biocide Delivery Unit, uses iodine rather than chlorine to kill bacteria.

POOL PURIFICATION - Space technology designed to sterilize water on long-duration spacecraft applied to swimming pool purification led to a system that uses two silver-copper alloy electrodes that generate silver and copper ions when an electric current passes through them to kill bacteria and algae without chemicals. I think we can purify water in Africa, thanks to research funded by NASA for the purpose of furthering NASA's goals.

Re:Space is unimportant

[denzacar]

Credibility?
Me?
When did THAT happen?
I thought I was just being a sarcastic ass, waiving my dick in the wind and all that...

Re:Space is unimportant

[Weedlekin]

"Now that the technology has improved and the environment is being put in greater focus, we're starting to see more of a push towards greener technology."

The push towards alternate energy sources is actually due to the fact that (a) the price of traditional fossil-fuelled ones has reached a point where they're starting to make economic sense; and (b) far too many of the existing reserves are in the hands of countries we either don't trust now, or are unstable enough to be potentially untrustworthy in the future.

If the primary driving force for developing and using such technologies wasn't political and economic, then we wouldn't have pseudo-green policies such as making ethanol from grain using methods that result in far more CO2 being generated per litre of fuel burned than refined mineral oil products, carbon credit trading, and plans to pump the CO2 from dirty coal-burning power stations (because coal is plentiful domestically) underground in an attempt to pretend that it doesn't exist.

Re:Space is unimportant

[entropiccanuck]

Meanwhile the trend for the past three decades has been to spend less on space every year, and yet our rate of return just keeps going up... Then by completely cutting the space program we'll achieve ultimate enlightenment and solve the world's problems. What's there to debate about this?

Re:Space is unimportant

[Shadowmist]

The implicit assumption is that space exploration just in and of itself will spur technology. This ignores the possibility that any effort of a similar scope would not have the same effect. It can be argued that an "Apollo" scale project aimed at energy conservation and environmental management would not only have it's own share of technological spinoffs, but that a greater percentage of them would actually be of direct benefit.

Failure...

[MrKaos]

Is when you do not dare to act, not when you do.

Re:Failure...

[elrous0]

The famous last words of many a dead daredevil

Re:Failure...

[fbjon]

Or to put it another way, failure is just success rounded down.

Pointless. Why bother?

[WhiteWolf666]

Cancel NASA, and stop space exploration. It's a big waste of time/money. Military needs can be handled by military budgets.

NASA, the U.S. populace, and the world in general have no real interest in propulsion systems capable of realistically lifting large payloads into space economically. We've done everything we can in space with the toy payloads we currently lift, and the only real economic sectors which benefit from continued exploration is orbital satellites, something which NASA handles very poorly (i.e. expensively).

Until someone has the balls to restart Project Orion, I don't see why we should even bother. The technology to put cities in orbit, not to mention on other planets, is readily available and understood. And cheap (on a per kilo basis). So why are we still playing chemical rockets?

It's a waste of time. The silly little experiments done on the ISS are pointless. Until someone invents a drive that can lift 100s (or thousands, or millions) of tons into orbit (or beyond) economically, we should stop bothering and try and let private enterprise come up with something.

The turn away from Project Orion in 1963 represented the end of man's technological development when it came to interplanetary space travel, and commercial space utilization. We dropped the reigns, and walked away (as a race). The current efforts at space travel are a gimmick and a waste of taxpayer dollars, and will continue to be unless we are willing to switch from chemical to nuclear propulsion. That's the truth of the matter.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[phoenixwade]

Until someone has the balls to restart Project Orion, I don't see why we should even bother. But, but, think of the environmental impact.... Orion would have irradiated a path through space from the beginning to the end of the mission... And then our [mutant] children would be stuck with the irradiated mess to clean up - think of mother earth! (um... I mean... Father Solar system!)

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[Dr.M0rph3us]

Until someone has the balls to restart Project Orion, I don't see why we should even bother. One of the reasons the project was banned was the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (from your link):

The vehicle and its test program would violate the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 as currently written, which prohibited all nuclear detonations except those which were conducted underground, both as an attempt to slow the arms race and to limit the amount of radiation in the atmosphere caused by nuclear detonations. There was an effort by the US government to put an exception into the 1963 treaty to allow for the use of nuclear propulsion for spaceflight, but Soviet fears about military applications kept the exception out of the treaty. ...not to mention the environmental issues (also from your link):

But the main unsolved problem for a launch from the surface of the Earth is nuclear fallout. [...] The United States Government concurred and decided that because of the danger to human life and the danger to electronic systems on the ground (from electromagnetic pulse) to shelve the project.

The turn away from Project Orion in 1963 represented the end of man's technological development I wouldn't percieve this as a walk away, but rather a reconsideration of the risks involved in space exploration. We can't just blow nuclear bombs to push payload into space :| The most economical method to bring multiton payloads into space is to fabricate them right there. Sure, it will be hard at first to develop and implement the technology required for space manufacturing, but this will pay off in time. The asteroid belt is a great place to begin, since it has huge ammounts of metal (plus silicates, possibly carbon polymers and also water in form of permafrost - see http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-258994/asteroid).

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[AstrumPreliator]

I wouldn't percieve this as a walk away, but rather a reconsideration of the risks involved in space exploration. We can't just blow nuclear bombs to push payload into space :| I definitely agree there. However, what I really would love to see is a deep space probe launched with this technology. Have the probe launched using conventional means to a safe distance from Earth before continuing on with the main stage. I realize that it would be extremely heavy to lift into orbit, but I just looked at the wiki article and they state a satellite orion would be ~300t. That's about 275,000kg, the International Space Station weighs around 245,000kg right now. Take this with a grain of salt of course, but perhaps they can launch it up in parts like they did with the ISS.

This is what NASA is around for, no company would be able to do this since there's no profit in it. This is a long term space goal. If you pointed the probe at Alpha Centuri then we might get data back in my lifetime, or my children's lifetime. It'd be a very expensive endeavor and the probe may fail at some point. But the rewards of observing another solar system up close are absolutely immense.

Oh well, it's a nice dream in either case.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Project Orion was projected to cause 20 cases of cancer per launch from the fallout.

That's a pretty small number compared to the cancer deaths caused by the nuclear tests of the 50's and 60's, and the type of cancer is preventable with a pill, but the public would wet their pants nonetheless.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[WhiteWolf666]

The environmental issues aren't as serious as you make them out to be. 5-10 launches who generate a tiny fraction of the fallout that the various open-air nuclear tests generated; however, 5-10 launches would be sufficient to put hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of tons of equipment into orbit. 5-10 launches might be enough to jump start deep space exploration.

It irks me that we are willing to contaminate the environment for weapons, but we aren't willing to embrace a small but known risk.

We were willing to detonate nuclear bombs to show off our military penises. Wouldn't it have been better to detonate some nuclear bombs to jumpstart orbital construction deep space exploration? 1-2 million tons or equipment on the moon would be sufficient, I think.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[rbanffy]

Orion is a really dumb design. NERVA and ROVER were far more viable and could be done with today's technology in Orion-friendly timescales. The nuclear lightbulb designs, while posing big challenges, are even more promising.

Orion was a nice idea, but the environmental impact is horrendous. The only reason to do it would be if we were going to be hit by something really, really, really big and Orion-class payloads would be the only thing that could stop it.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[DrVomact]

Orion has sheer scale going for it. We're talking payloads in the thousands of tons here! I don't think the alternatives you mention will deliver anything like the economies of scale possible with Orion. Besides, the notion of propelling yourself through space by exploding nukes behind yourself has an inimitable brutal beauty unequaled by any other scheme I've ever heard of.

I'd be more than willing to absorb the risk of a launching a couple or three Orions, with the purpose of building a space-based factory to make even more (and bigger) Orions. It's not that expensive to boost people into space, but getting the tooling for a space-based factory into orbit (around the Earth or somewhere else in the Solar System) to build truly huge ships would be a pain with chemical rockets. Once the ships are available, people could go up into LEO, rendezvous with a rocket and commence living in space.

Oh yeah, we need a capitalist rationale for the whole thing. How about this for starters: old folks' homes in space! Yes, you geezers whining about your athritis, forget about those short joyrides—you can now cough up a few million bucks to help finance a zero gravity retirement home for yourself! Let's see...how old is Bill Gates these days?

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[WhiteWolf666]

A capitalist rationale?

I've got a better one. With Orion, Moon/Asteroid mining is reasonable. Cheap, even.

Take a look.

A 2 billion ton asteroid could potentially be worth over a trillion dollars in metals. One could move a 2 billion ton asteroid with Orion. Or, one could build a factory on a 2 billion ton asteroid with orion ships, and send million ton refined chunks of it into earth orbit.

Want another capitalist rationale?

Energy. Need to fund an energy intensive industry? Put it in a far orbit. Use Solar Panels the size of Texas, or put in a nuclear reactor with 20+ GW output. Safety risks are small-to-nil, and you've got plenty of room for passive cooling/heatsinks. Drop ship the outputs. Utilize the metals from the moon or asteroids. Jettison waste on an escape trajectory.

All of this becomes possible with Orion.

Orion is not a means to an end. Orion *is* the end, at least in terms of colonizing the solar system. Any propulsion technology that generates those high levels of thrust, and capable of maintaining it for months/years puts the entire solar system into man's palm. Colonize the Moon. Colonize Mars. Colonize a few moons of Jupiter/Saturn. Build some space cities.

Space is *extremely* wealthy in terms of material resources (inorganic), and you don't have to worry about those pesky environmentalists. Hell; there's a decent argument to be made that its fine to pollute the Moon, Mars, Asteroids, or empty space, since you can alleviate the load on earth.

Cheap, high-speed space transportation is any capitalist's dream, because it is an empty, super-rich frontier. There are empires to carve out, if only we could get there.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[DrVomact]

Oh, I think you and I agree on the wonderfulness of space—and I agree that it is the end, not the means to anything. (I've been reading science fiction for a long time.) The problem is that this potential wealth is of no interest to most people on Earth right now...and if you think about it, "space wealth" is never going to benefit people on Earth very much. You talk about "drop shipping" stuff from orbit. Um...that's usually called a "meteor impact", and it's not exactly something you want happening regularly in your back yard, trust me. And that's assuming that the "shipper" has good intentions.

No, I think that the wealth up there will benefit mainly the people who go live up there. I'm hoping that some day there will be such people, but it doesn't look like it's happening any time soon. Back in the eighteenth century, any group of disgruntled individuals could build or hire a ship to take them to the New World. But we, the disgruntled of today, are not able to escape so easily. About how much chance do you think there is that a group of private individuals would be allowed to build an Orion? And no government really has the incentive to do so.

Of course, if we learn one thing from the past, it's that things change. We need that initial rationale to get large-scale space travel off the ground, and get a critical mass of people into space to start a self-sustaining spacefaring culture. (Two puns back there, for the price of one.) Maybe someone will think of something to make people think there's sound economic reasons for building one those huge things...or maybe an imminent asteroid impact will provide the needed incentive.

Psst...did you know there's a fountain of youth on Mars? And a city of gold on Ceres.

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[syousef]

NASA, the U.S. populace, and the world in general have no real interest in propulsion systems capable of realistically lifting large payloads into space economically. We've done everything we can in space with the toy payloads we currently lift, and the only real economic sectors which benefit from continued exploration is orbital satellites, something which NASA handles very poorly (i.e. expensively).

Yeah! Who needs those big expensive space telescopes, probes and satellites! We know everything we need to about the universe! Down with science. Hang on. Why's that asteroid getting bigger and bigger?

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[KlausBreuer]

Pfff.

Project Orion is a nice idea (and used by Larry Niven in his SF), but the very concept is positively idiotic: let's have a big ship. Kick it into the air. Then it drops a nuclear bomb behind it, detonating it, being pushed forward by the resulting blast
The smallest version, known as "satellite Orion", would require 540 atom bombs to reach orbit. The bigger ones up to a 1080.

Brilliant. Let's use a huge amount of nuclear bombs to reach orbit. Who cares what remains behind us, right? Right?

Re:Pointless. Why bother?

[rbanffy]

I hope you understand it's not like riding a chemical rocket into space. It's exploding a trail of nuclear devices.

The environmental impact of a couple dozen nuclear detonations all the way from the lowest atmosphere to LEO is simply ridiculous.

First we need clean nukes. Then we can talk about Orion.

and don't 4get...

[Anonymous Coward]

ralph nadir, always the low-point of any campaign;-)

Prioritizing Near-Term Benefits

[NetSettler]

As much as I would love the idea of Space Exploration, I'd trade away the budget for serious efforts on Climate Change, since a number of the things we might learn in Space will be irrelevant if we don't solve Climate Change so that we survive at all.

Then again, if we were going to make a near-term intensive effort to establish a permanent self-sustaining base off-planet, I'd be all for it even with Climate Change dollars. It would seem prudent both as a backup/insurance plan in case we mess up this planet (eliminating some of the "single point of failure" problem we have looming now) and also as a way of gaining data about how to live in inhospitable places (like the Earth is on track to be). Just about any dollars spent on how to manage atmospheres, grow food in artificially controlled ways, etc. seems money well spent. I think the key to making Space palatable for the nearterm is to keep the expenses targeted to those with direct applicability.

I've recently started to shift my views on the ethics of Terraforming Mars, as Earth's habitability hangs in the balance, and to start to question the ethics of not doing so. It would be fun to discover Life there, but if the price is preserving a few potential microbes there at the expense of possibly losing valuable data that could help to preserve our own planet, that seems a steep and selfish price. Mars is a resource, not to be exploited commercially (which is somewhat how we got into the Climate Change mess), but that might be used strategically. So is the Moon, for that matter, to the extent we can make anything useful of that.

Sadly, I doubt that either Space or Climate will get attention. Instead, we'll get gas tax holidays so we can keep burning oil until we're like Venus and can't even see the sky.

Re:Prioritizing Near-Term Benefits

[ardor]

As said countless times:

the idea of using the NASA budget for other projects is flawed. NASA's budget is tiny. And, at least NASA inspires and produces useful technology from time to time. Argue against the military budget instead, which is already in the trillions. But leave NASA alone.

Re:Prioritizing Near-Term Benefits

[WindBourne]

Interesting. For being a philosopher, you miss a lot. Not only are we spending damn little on space via NASA, but in addition, what happens if all the climate change fails? Do you really want us to go the way of the dinosaurs when it is in our powers to place us on mars? Your philosophy needs some work.

Re:Prioritizing Near-Term Benefits

[NetSettler]

WindBourne:
Do you really want us to go the way of the dinosaurs when it is in our powers to place us on mars?

Uh, actually, if you go back and re-read what I wrote, you'll see I made a specific exception for that. From my post:

Netsettler:
Then again, if we were going to make a near-term intensive effort to establish a permanent self-sustaining base off-planet, I'd be all for it even with Climate Change dollars. It would seem prudent both as a backup/insurance plan in case we mess up this planet ...

Much though I love the research involved, the parts of the NASA budget that I just can't see justifying with near-term dollars given the other problems we have to solve on earth are things to do with deep space exploration like Hubble. I'm not saying give up on space. I'm just say concentrate on the stuff that makes sense in the short term, and make it a goal to get civilization back to where it has a long-term worth caring about.

Maybe we should just Open Source it?

[bsDaemon]

Seriously -- the Government isn't taking it seriously, and just like immigration that leaves an opening for citizens who recognize a problem, and a lack of response, to do something about it themselves.

Like in Jules Verene's "From the Earth to the Moon" -- open the project up to subscription, so to speak. seek donations from individuals, as well as from large donors, organizations and governments world wide.

Release all of the schematics and source code, take submissions from volunteers but try and maintain a budget high enough to ensure that high-quality engineers can be maintained on staff and that hard devices can actually get built.

Turn a manned mission to Mars into a world-wide, grass-roots endeavor. We all have a stake in getting off this rock and its clear that the powers that be aren't going to actually bother.

I have some experience in non-profit management and fund raising. Anyone want to help start an Open Space Foundation?

Re:Maybe we should just Open Source it?

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe we are not meant to leave this rock, maybe we were confined here for a reason, look around at how shitty the human race really is on a global scale.

Re:Maybe we should just Open Source it?

[AVryhof]

Yes.

Space exploration should not be a race, and it should not be for profit. Space exploration should be a cooperative effort of everyone willing to support it.

I'm ultimately opposed to it being under control of any government, and strongly opposed to it being privatized.

I don't know a whole lot about space, but I'm willing to bet there are a lot of people who would support a global not-for-profit and non-aligned foundation for space exploration.

So.... where to start?

Re:Maybe we should just Open Source it?

[bsDaemon]

Well, if we make it based in the US, then we need to fill out the forms to make a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation, which means also appointing a board of directors and stuff... the key then would be who to put on the board.

We would want relatively high-profile individuals in order to attract the most funding, as people will feel that it is a safe venture with a reasonable chance of actually doing something -- however, not people who are likely to grandstand or try and take over the organization.

We also would have to have an Executive Director -- someone who could manage the day-to-day goings on.

Once we had the Board and stuff, we would then have to figure out what, exactly, we were trying to accomplish and then decide what milestones we would need to mark progress.

We'd then probably want to get a few big-name, deep-pocket donors on board. People like Paul Allen (who, iirc, helps to fund scaled composites or one of those x-prize competitors) would be a good source.

That's where we get the money to pay the primary engineers, gain materials, etc.

As to the software side of things, definately, the open source model would be excellent, but I think that we'd have to run it in a sort of BSD-fashion, where there is a core team that directs quality control and does the heavy lifting - especially on systems where lives may depend on it. It's not the sort of thing that you want some random dude tossing a few hundred lines up in his spare time and no one checking it against anything.

I'm just sort of brainstorming though. Its the sort of thing that does bare serious consideration though, and I'd be more than willing to help get it off the ground (so to speak) -- however, figuring out that board of directors is the key.

How about this? Screw it.

[bogie]

Worry about the launching and repair of Satellites and that's it. When everyone has Health Insurance and a living wage then we can talk about it. Deal with our present problems before we worry about the future.

Re:How about this? Screw it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of our present problems stem from the fact that we don't worry enough about the future.

Re:How about this? Screw it.

[VoidEngineer]

People already do have a living wage. The simple fact of the matter is that things like income are statistically distributed. There's always going to be an upper half of the distribution that is doing better than the lower half. And even those people in our so called 'poverty' bracket have access to things like refrigeration, roadways, public broadcast radiology and television, public flu inoculations, light bulbs, and so forth. Our level of 'poverty' is, in most of the ways that really count, significantly better than the wealthiest level of living a thousand years ago. Once you get refrigeration, light bulbs, and inoculations, the rest is simply a matter of Keeping Up With the Jones. In the big scheme of things, we already have a living wage.

And regarding Health Insurance, there is already an emergency care safety net in effect. If you have an emergency, an emergency can't turn you away, by law. I agree there are improvements to be made in that sector, although 80% coverage is already a significant portion of the population (way up from 500 years ago, when health insurance didn't exist).

In order to deal with our current problems, we have to start dealing with the problem of process restructuring and performance improvement. Anybody who has studied Six Sigma process improvement methodologies knows that to gain a 1 standard deviation often requires an order of magnitude of work and/or investments. Space program is an investment that can return those kinds of investments. Want research that result in better healthcare for the masses? Try the space program

(For example, developing fundamental advancements in understandings of physics that allows us to build better scanners and detectors, like MRI scanners, which can be used to provided better health care to the masses. One of the biggest problems with MRI scanners is that they take an hour to scan a patient. Want universal healthcare? Figure out a way to build an MRI scanner that does a scan in 5 minutes and doesn't require superconducting cryomagnets, and which can be installed anywhere (like x-ray machines at airports). Guess who would be in a position to do that kind of research? The space program, actually.)

Re:How about this? Screw it.

[ciggieposeur]

The simple fact of the matter is that things like income are statistically distributed.

Only if the income distribution you are using is an incredibly steep exponential function.

If you are talking about a Gaussian normal distribution -- which is a typical one for truly random variables -- then the US income distribution looks nothing like it.

Re:How about this? Screw it.

[rk]

I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but that chart is a little bit disingenuous. Income != net worth, and if you're going to make a point of showing Bill Gate's largest single year of net worth increase as the top end (presumably from the 1999 year when MSFT split AND doubled), then to be fair, you'd have to show the mantle borehole his loss of net worth takes the very next year.

Google for "Pareto distribution" for more than you probably ever want to know about the phenomenon.

Re:How about this? Screw it.

[ciggieposeur]

Income != net worth

Absolutely right. And if you had read the site, you would have seen their claim that the L curve for net worth is even steeper.

I haven't found the distribution of the top 5% online, but I have done the math with the IRS numbers before and it agrees with the chart on the site.

the Candidates are facing Bigger Problems.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Oil production peaked in 2005. The USA decided stealing oil was a better idea than buying it, so they invaded Iraq, and that took 112 billion barrels off the market, so as it comes on tap, the plateau of production would remain longer.

In the meantime, the current administration let the nutty banking policies developed under Clinton's watch to http://www.usa-foreclosure.com/">fester and metasticise, and now the country's technically insolvent.

As a consequence, I think putting people in space is going to be seriously backburnered, and I would humbly submit that the majority of people who will ever be in space have already gone.

I'm not happy about that - I would love to go put bases on the moon to harvest He3 and do all that kind of groovy stuff, but I think we shot our wad, and pissed away the resources on crap like highways for Cadillac Escalades and useless cities like Las Vegas. We had our chance, and we blew it.

RS

Re:the Candidates are facing Bigger Problems.

[DriedClexler]

now the country's technically insolvent.

Not that I disagree with your point, but what does that mean, and what figure should I be looking at, and what's its significance?

I found this to be a better exposition, but who will heed the warning?

We need a truce: Conservatives will acknowledge the dire emergency of global warming, if liberals acknowledge the dire emergency of future national bankruptcy (i.e. increasing liabilities of the federal government, state/local governments, and some private employers).

Re:the Candidates are facing Bigger Problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

and useless cities like Las Vegas

Now you're thinking... Casinos on the moon. Hey they thought they were crazy for building a casino in the middle of the desert. Who would want to go to a casino in the desert they said?

Re:the Candidates are facing Bigger Problems.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Hi.

The link to the federal reserve page is interesting. It's the " AGGREGATE RESERVES OF DEPOSITORY INSTITUTIONS AND THE MONETARY BASE", aka, "how much money is in the bank". What you want to look at is the Actual Value, i.e., the "NON-BORROWED RESERVES" column. Note that the value as recently as last November was $42 billion. not bad. I've been following this page ever since they stopped publishing the M3 two years ago to hide all the money they've been printing. Basically, for the past few years, we've had a lot of reserves in the bank - sometimes $60 billion, sometimes $40 billion, but certainly plenty of cash.

Well, look at the numbers in that column (the second column):

2007 Nov. 42679 42313
Dec. 42599 27169

2008

May 7p 44177 -85018

So, basically, what this says is the total non-borrowed assets for the entire American Financial System is running $85 billion dollars in the red, and has been in the negative since the first of the year. Basically, the country is insolvent. Not bankrupt: insolvent.

Re: your comment:

We need a truce: Conservatives will acknowledge the dire emergency of global warming, if liberals acknowledge the dire emergency of future national bankruptcy (i.e. increasing liabilities of the federal government, state/local governments, and some private employers).

I would note that the greatest strides in destroying the economy of this country since 1900 have all come under Republican and conservative administrations (harding/coolidge/hoover then reagan/bush and the latest, Bush2/neocon). It is true that roosevelt amped up the nations debt a great deal, but this was quickly fizzled by Truman and eisenhower. Johnson put a lot of money into social programs, and increased the debt, but: the debt mostly went into the Vietnam war. The biggest strides towards fiscal demise were during the reagan Admin and now the Bush v2 junta, both republican and both conservative regimes.

RS

Re:the Candidates are facing Bigger Problems.

[opec]

Basically, the country is insolvent. Not bankrupt: insolvent.

This dictionary defines bankruptcy and insolvency as the same (when liabilities/debts are greater than assets). Do you hold a differing definition? Just curious.

Re:the Candidates are facing Bigger Problems.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Hi!

they are *extremely* similar, but from my pespective, insolvency can be a simple cashflow problem. Intestingly, that's the exact tack the Fed has chosen - rather than see it as a bankruptcy, it's just a cash problem. So, what the Fed is doing is basically buying all the bad debt. They don't want to SAY that, but essentially, that's what is happening. They're dumping $200 billion in Treasury securities to keep the banks liquid and able to meet their payments. The deficit is caused by the bad debts the banks had the stupidity to loan. So, that's why even though the non-borrowed assets of the country's entire banking system has collapsed to around -$90 billion, the banks are still afloat.

Basically, by seeing insolvency as a cashflow problem, rather than a bankruptcy problem, they're keeping the Titanic afloat. It's kind of like there's a huge leak, so make the boat bigger to counter-balance the loss of bouyancy, so it sinks more evenly...

And that's EXACTLY what you see happening. Rather than a crash, a la 1893, it is drifting into an inflationary heat death, a la the 1970s.

The problem is, this is to b expected, basically, forever, until we replace our economic engine with one based on extraction of resources to one of sustainability. Sustainability has some use for space exploration, specifically in terms of data satellites. But has Zero Use for putting people up there.

RS

Re:Wha?

[phoenixwade]

Well Bush pushed space exploration fairly hard. I would expect that a Dem in the White House won't have time for it. They'll be busy spending money "for the children." It will be hard to justify spending money on space exploration when you campaign on platform of a Chicken Little economy if you don't win. I suspect you are right, the Democratics won't spend money on Space programs, but for the wrong reason. Not because they are spending money on the Children, but because there is no money to spend. We've have and are continuing to dump a lot of money into Iraq, and even if the next regime withdraws from Iraq, it'll still cost a fortune to get out. That money has to come from somewhere after all....

"3 major candidates + Ron Paul"

[davidwr]

TFSummary is misleading, TFArticle says the 3 major candidates plus Ron Paul.

Four candidates

[autophile]

Well, to be fair, the submitter was probably thinking about Clinton (who thinks economists are elitist), Paul (who wants sick poor people to stop contributing to the economy), McCain (who wants to solve a religious civil war with guns), and Obama (...). So really, only one candidate :D

Re:Four candidates

[scorp1us]

How does Ron Paul want sick poor people to stop contributing to the economy? He just wants them off social welfare so they don't drag the rest of the economy down. Which is a negative contribution. So he wants them to doubly contribute. Get better and get working. Only Ron Paul has a plan to REDUCE the rising cost of health care, and he should know. He's a doctor. The rest will wither perpetuate the status quo, or increase the cost of health care by getting the government involved. That won't help anyone, rich, sick or poor.

How High?

[Anonymous Coward]

the submitter is probably high.

I most certainly am not high. I... wait, whoa... what was I just saying?

space, the final frontier

[theheadlessrabbit]

as a nerd, space exploration really excites me.

But the rational part of my brain tells me that manned space exploration is of little value, scientifically. We can send probes and rovers to all kids of places that humans can't really get to. it also helps that with robots, there is no moral dilemma when you send them on a one way trip.

I don't understand why there are only a small number of probes heading into space, I would love to see experiments with different kinds of propulsion, send probes out with ion drives, solar sales, try out the eventually catch up to, and pass voyager.

how many moons does Saturn have? we should have probes orbiting each of them by now.

of course, data from probes don't inspire children as much as watching grainy footage of people stepping onto extraterrestrial soil, which is why we need to have a manned space program.

but manned space flight is pitiful.

the ISS is a joke. we should have a huge, rotating '2001 a space odyssey' style station up there by now.

last time i checked, the replacement for the shuttle is a step back to the Apollo style capsule.

make space a place people want to go to, and put a system in place where the best and brightest, (rather than the richest) get to go.

Re:space, the final frontier

[bsDaemon]

The original astronauts were all fighter pilots (with engineerign degrees) who got to wear Omega Speedmaster watches and drive free Corvettes.

In fact, the original astronauts were a lot like James Bond.

I was at the NASM last week to check out that UAV exhibit and there were some astronauts there doing a talk about the ISS. It was a bunch of crap from some chunky, balding scientists about how much fun it is to play with your food in 0g.

Seriously.

Bring back the seat-of-your-pants, high-adventure space program and people will be totally into it. Columbus didn't cross the Atlantic to see if whipped cream worked the same in America as it did in Europe -- he did it for fortune and the fame that comes with just getting somewhere before anyone else.

Do the stupid science experiments later. If you want the funding and the future scientist corps to get there, you have to get people interested first. Fat bald guys in blue jump suits are not the way to inspire a generation.

Re:space, the final frontier

[garett_spencley]

"there is no moral dilemma when you send them on a one way trip."

Food for thought: when you're spending 1B (number pulled out of my rear) to send a single probe to mars when there are children dying of starvation here at home you might be able to find some moral dilemmas. If you chose to look for them.

Re:space, the final frontier

[retupmoca]

Actually, what I'd like is a little toy spaceship!! That's what slashdot said at the bottom of the page, so that's what we need.

Re:space, the final frontier

[Gud]

To many NASA == "White collar welfare program" but that is too strong, many of the things that are done in space are good. The bad things in IMHO are ISS (waste of money for no good reason) and "Mission to Mars" (a joke)

The dollars/euros/rubles should be spent on basic research, global climate monitoring, long range simple probes, better launch capability.

NASA for budgeting reasons designs new programs to be cheap to launch but expensive to operate as it is easier to get funding for existing programs than new ones, it this issue was addressed
then the cost of each NASA mission could be reduced. Unfortunately this is not in the interest of the politicians or the contractors that benefit from the man hungry operation centers.

Re:space, the final frontier

[rfunches]

last time i checked, the replacement for the shuttle is a step back to the Apollo style capsule.

My understanding is that the implied "step forward" called the Space Shuttle prevented manned exploration outside Earth's orbit. If you're so much in favor of manned space exploration, why are you bashing our best, most viable method to reach the Moon or Mars?

Re:space, the final frontier

[ardor]

And spending 400B on slaughtering people in Iraq is favorable, right?

Help the children with these billions, and leave space programs intact. At least NASA makes some sense.

Re:space, the final frontier

[garett_spencley]

"And spending 400B on slaughtering people in Iraq is favorable, right?"

Is that a question that you're directing at me, personally ?

Because my answer would be "no".

Re:space, the final frontier

[rk]

Just so you're clear, the money spent on space missions doesn't get put in a briefcase and put into space with the instrument. Most of that is actually spent on personnel, like most human endeavors, both public and private. And those people keep food on the table for their family, buy goods, pay taxes, and yes, even occasionally donate to help children dying of starvation here.

BTW, as one of those guys working on a few of these missions you're complaining about, I can tell you as a person intimately familiar with the budgeting for unmanned missions that a billion for a single mission to Mars would be living in luxury. Both rovers cost less than that, and the orbiters even less still. A modern sports stadium costs more than a mission to Mars. The entire space science budget proposed for FY2009 is 4.4 billion, which is about 22 days of the direct Iraq war budget authorization, or 6 days of interest payments on our debt. Our little lab here is a hair under 8 minutes of that interest payment.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a neutral party here, but it seems to me that there's some places that could be trimmed just a little bit that would make a much larger impact than if you abolished NASA.

At least we are not sort of Meta-Advocates

[paratiritis]

Like Mr Zsidisin, who is advocating the existence of more advocates. It is probably a sign of stagnation in any field when discussion shifts from ways to achieve more progress, to ways to attract more people to the cause.

I am a space enthusiast, but I largely agree with the space critic above, who wants to shift space to the private sector. I think NASA's role should be reduced, with projects shifting to private companies and eventually NASA becoming the FAA of space

Projects that should be pursued right now are things like private companies putting men in true orbit (that will probably make money by opening up true space tourism) and perhaps sending unmanned probes to other planets to get concrete quantifiable knowledge by organizing prizes like the X-Prize (completed), and the Google Lunar X PRIZE (just starting).

Do these things well, get results, and the advocates will come. Old astronauts calling in, and hoping future presidents will give money doesn't do half as much. And then you wonder where have the advocates gone...

Re:Wha?

[elrous0]

Yes, Bush pushed hard for space exploration, if by "pushing hard" you mean "gave it a lot of lip service but didn't actually increase the budget."

submitter is probably high

[Hatta]

But that's typical for slashdot submissions.

Space critic

[J.R. Random]

When we're running budget deficits of half a trillion dollars a year it is outrageous to be planning a manned mission to Mars. As for the moon, we've been there and done that (conspiracy theories notwithstanding). Zero out the whole manned space program, keep the satellite and unmanned probe programs going at a modest level, and give the taxpayer a break. If a manned space program had to be funded soley by manned space program enthusiasts there would be a whole lot fewer of those enthusiasts.

Re:Space critic

[Anonymous Coward]

if i remember right, NASA gets like 0.4% of the budget. that is four tenths of a percent. if the budget were a dollar, nasa would not get even one cent, but less than half of it.

  i thinks it is a shame that people think killing nasa would fix the budget deficit of usa. it would not even make a dent. just look how much money was poured into saving greedy banks from the subprime scam and things will go into perspective.

Re:Space critic

[J.R. Random]

The Apollo program cost about $150 billion in today's dollarettes. Mars is much, much farther away and it will take much, much longer to get there and get back. I'd be very surprised if a manned mission to Mars could be pulled off for less than a 500 billion of today's dollars, and it could easily cost twice that. The only reason it hasn't blown a huge hole in the budget yet is because it's still in the hypothetical "We're thinking about how we might do it" stage. Better to kill it now before this monster gets legs. Already the budgetary pressures of the space station have squeezed out a lot of space science. If you really think we can get to Mars cheap, create a voluntary organization to do it and help fund it yourself.

Advocate != Government Advocate

[rijrunner]

It may be that times have passed the political parties and politicians behind.

    The space advocates are now looking at private sector and have a more DIY attitude. The technological barriers of entry have been greatly reduced to the point where there are multiple competing private ventures that are likely to succeed.

    I think a lot of space advocates are disillusioned with governmental programs. The US and NASA does not do well with large scale programs. After the mess that was ISS, NASA had a fairly reasonable development path into space under O'Keefe. But, when Griffin came in, he ditched that approach and technology and instead went with the Stick and Orion, which bears a striking resemblance to the worst aspects of the Shuttle and ISS development paths.

    Quite honestly, the US government just needs to allow room for private enterprise at this time. The FAA made some needed changes to their licensing of launch vehicles, which is what is really opening the door for private ventures. The technology requirements for space access are moving a lot closer to what can be handled by smaller companies.

    I might look for a government policy for environmental protection. I might look to the government for a policy covering mining. But, I really don't expect the government to pay for the mining operations. Give some guidelines and provide oversight.

Re:Wha?

[toddhisattva]

Shhhh....you'll upset the idiots.

Republicans are the Party of Science. Democrats are the party of whining about science.

A human backup plan

[turing_m]

I'd like to see some questions asked, and some answers. I think that humans need some form of contingency plan that does not consist purely of holes drilled in mountains. As such, we should be moving in this direction in a long-term fashion - the end goal being a self-sufficient and growing colony somewhere that is not earth. So here are some questions.

Given budgets of different sizes, what can realistically be achieved? Hence, what brings us the best bang for buck? What are the most likely approaches?

Is it possible to turn space exploration, colonization and the like into a positive feedback loop that generates more of the same? (i.e. is there a valid business model somewhere? What are the best chances for building some sort of self-sufficient colony up there somewhere, even if populated by self-replicating robots?)

What type of government is most likely to fund this for as long as it takes? If not, what sort is necessary? As much as possible should be open-sourced to prevent research being wasted forever.

What necessary technologies can we anticipate that make it much cheaper to just wait a while longer (e.g. computer hardware, robotics, solar panels, etc)?

Is there any utility in being able to put something city-sized into space via Project Orion? Ten people dead due to cancer is nothing compared to most yearly road deaths. But again, only if there is utility in that approach. Maybe self-replicating robots can do the same thing for less cost but just taking longer to ramp up.

In the end, I think that there are two issues:
1. How do we build a self-sufficient system (at first, probably sans humans) capable of growing - i.e. net energy positive, net resource positive, growing at some sort of exponential rate, even if slowly?
2. What are the minimum requirements in terms of energy/unit time and resources/human, radiation shielding etc for humans to survive and reproduce in some sort of closed-loop system bar energy?

The key is the self-sufficiency. We have finite energy on this earth, but a lot of time and brainpower to do basic research. If we can set something up such that we only have to get it working once and after that it takes care of itself, we have won. If we can figure out how to do everything completely closed-loop bar energy (which can be gotten from solar), we have won. (Water and oxygen should be able to be transported in one big shot via Project Orion provided that it is fully recycled after it arrives.)

Somewhere there needs to be a checklist and someone going down the list until all those bugs are squashed. I suspect that with a lot of it, we don't even need to go to space, it can be done cheaply on earth. Not too glamorous, extremely hard, but all necessary. It probably needs a good movie or two to convince the public though.

Re:A human backup plan

[cdrguru]

Yes, we need an offworld self-sufficient colony.

However, launching an Orion propulsion vehicle from the Earth's surface should be something reserved for emergencies. Dire emergencies. Using Orion from orbit to anywhere else is somewhat reasonable but again it is pretty risky and is probably something that should be held as an option for emergencies.

Think Deep Impact. They had the right idea with the wrong graphics. If we needed to intercept a comet in 12 months that pretty much counts as an emergency. Think Footfall. Repelling an invasion (no matter how absurd or unlikely) would count as an emergency.

The Mayflower wasn't an emergency and we shouldn't think of establishing a colony under similar circumstances as one either. But we do need to think in terms of an offworld colony, even a one-way "generation ship" design before there is a real emergency.

Right now, an asteroid or a good-size comet could mean the end of humanity. All of it. No second chances, no options just "the end". We are at the threshold of being able to sidestep that and at least give a branch of the human race a chance.

Re:A human backup plan

[turing_m]

Very likely, there will be some sort of minimum mass required to start a self-sufficient colony. Even something that can mine a planet or moon to create solar panels to power further mining, robots to repair themselves and create more robots... I suspect that this is going to take some sort of minimum tonnage to work.

We are dealing with physical constraints here, and also man-hours of research constraints.

Remember, the mayflower wasn't an open boat - it was a cargo ship. It carried about 100 people. At the bare minimum, it needed to house farm animals, tools, seeds, humans, a crew, etc. in order to create a self-sufficient colony in America. In the first year, half the people died.

If the minimum mass for a self-sufficient offworld colony requires Project Orion, then that's what we'll have to use. Some people may die as well.

At least the fleshing out of such a plan ought to be done now. Research takes time, and breakthroughs can't be scheduled. The Manhattan project wasn't completed until several years after the US entered WWII. If that is the quickest "big engineering" can operate... if an asteroid comes along we are probably fscked. Best to get started now.

Well, I ADVOCATE Space!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

X and Y are fine, but must stand up and speak for the inclusion of a Z-Axis!

They're too busy reading A.T.S!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who's a space advocate already knows that NASA is the scientific equivalent of "The Hills". It's basically a fake TV reality show and all the good stuff is currently hidden by the U.S. Government (and on the far side of the moon!)

Ron Paul is still in the race

[cadeon]

Despite people assuming otherwise, Ron Paul is still officially in the race. That makes 4- so, maybe the editor is high.

Where? We are busy.

[J05H]

The root of the issue is that us space advocates are busy. Many of us are involved in aerospace or technology companies and don't have as much time for advocacy. Others have given up, retired or are still establishing their networks. There is an amazing generation coming up right now that is passionate about space. One thing however: NASA is increasingly irrelevant even to those that work there. Private and military space are where the action is. SpaceX, SpaceDev, Virgin, etc and AFRL have so much more going on. NASA is a politically-correct football that gets kicked around. Not to diss to much, they do the impossible and make it look easy. It's just that what NASA does best (Robot probes, basic research) has been superseded by what they do mediocre: operations.

Space is not just about "exploration" - and NASA is not going to do any colonizing - that is the venue of private activity.

Personally, I'm to busy working and keeping my wife in grad school to worry about March Storm and ISDC.

Adam Curtis provides an answer

[damburger]

Watch the Adam Curtis documentary 'The Century of Self' - it can be easily found on your favorite video sharing site.

Modern society is so deeply invested in stoking peoples unconscious desires for profit that it is no longer possible for us to engage in large scale rational action, like a space program.

Re:Adam Curtis provides an answer

[pbaer]

I'm rusty with my history, but when have we ever been capable of "large scale rational action"? The only example I can think of that somewhat qualifies is WW2, but that seems to be by far the exception and not a general trend.

If Ron Paul == Cowboy Neil, then yes.

[MarkusQ]

As of the end of last week at least, Ron Paul was still in the race.

I suspect Hillary finds this fact very inspiring.

--MarkusQ

Exploring space with humans is stupid...

[bradbury]

Until it becomes clear that exploring space with humans as they are currently constructed is stupid then the entire "space exploration" process makes no sense.

We did not evolve to go there or live there and until we are redesigned to meet the environmental requirements we should not be there.

The bacteria Deinococcus radiodurans had a better desgin spec than Homo sapiens. Someone should knock that concept into the candidates for presidency and administrators at NASA.

Re:Exploring space with humans is stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

My heart tells me to mod you down, but my brain tells me to check the "Post Anonymously" box and call you a short sighted idiot instead.

There WERE congressional hearings after Apollo 1

[Ellis D. Tripp]

, and the summary is available online at:

http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/Failure_Reports/as-204/senate_956/index.htm

There was a lot of pressure from some members of congress (particularly Walter Mondale) to shut the program down after the fire. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and the program recovered from the tragedy with the launch of Apollo 7 the next year.

Yes, Nader IS running....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

, and he probably has my vote at this point, as Clinton/Obama/McCain all pretty much disgust me.

http://www.votenader.org/

I WOULD like to hear something from Ralph Nader regarding space and the NASA budget, though. Hopefully his position is better than Obama's idea to effectively ground the program for about 10 years (after which it may not be too easy to restart).

Re:Yes, Nader IS running....

[DragonTHC]

go ahead and waste your vote and prevent someone else from winning.

Re:Yes, Nader IS running....

[Shadowmist]

Nader's not likely to have the opinion you want, but he does have the list of the problems that MUST be attended to whether there is a space program or not, energy efficiency, global warming, global resource management, He's fairly likely to support space tech that is in line with such an end like the LandSat programs but is not likely to be overly enthused with the idea of going to Mars.... "just because it's there."

http://www.votenader.org/issues/

Re:Yes, Nader IS running....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Such is the eternal problem with being a political left-winger who strongly supports the space program, I suppose. The candidates who I tend to agree with on most issues usually differ with me on the importance of space exploration.

A notable exception was Dennis Kucinich, who repeatedly called for substantial increases to the NASA budget, but was pretty much pushed out of the race by the party machine and the corporate media.

Re:Yes, Nader IS running....

[Shadowmist]

To tell the truth, I'm of mixed views of the priorities that should be attached to the space program. The ISS still looks like an expensive solution still searching for an appropriate mission, and I don't see the value of much of manned flight when unmanned probles at the present point do much more of a job per dollar spent.

I am however a strong supporter of the space program where it benefits Earth science and I have a fairly inclusive view of that.

The Mars Society

[MajorPeabody]

The Mars Society (http://www.marssociety.org) is also ramping up their activity in the political arena. This group has been working with NASA and other "real rocket scientists" to promote the goal of sending humans to Mars.
--
Harold Miller
Life, Founding Member

Space travel isn't feasible

[Animats]

Space travel with chemical fuels isn't feasible. You just can't pack enough energy per unit mass into the fuel. This is a fundamental limitation of chemistry. Liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen is as good as it can possibly get, and that's been in use for decades.

Only by desperate weight reduction measures, resulting in incredibly fragile vehicles, is anything made to fly into space at all. The vehicles are almost all fuel. Pieces have to be thrown away after launch. Payloads are dinky for the size of the vehicle. Costs are insanely high.

It's been that way for over forty years. It's not getting any better. No combination of parts will fix this fundamentally broken technology.

Space travel won't work until we get a better energy source.

Re:Space travel isn't feasible

[Danny Rathjens]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator ;)

Re:Space travel isn't feasible

[Strange Ranger]

I had you modded insightful but ...

You state perfectly why a new source of energy is critical for space travel.
But doesn't finding a new source of energy sound familiar?

What we need is some sexy way to get everybody on board. Beating the Russians to the moon is sexy. Heck pioneering the "Information Age" was sexy for awhile because it was so enabling. How can we make "new sources of energy" into something sexy?

Hey space is pretty sexy. As a species I honestly think most of us are much likelier to get a nice cart if somebody first sells us a sexy horse.
What about "better sources of energy" can inspire us, most especially our youth?

Re:Space travel isn't feasible

[Animats]

What we need is some sexy way to get everybody on board.

If the physics is against you, that won't help.

There are options, but they're all messy or dangerous. Orion-type nuclear launch would work, if you're willing to accept about 0.5 deaths from cancer per launch. NERVA-type nuclear rockets were seriously considered for Apollo. Antimatter propulsion looks possible but hazardous. It might be worth it if we had to deflect an asteroid.

Launch lasers need a gigawatt of laser power per metric ton launched. And some of that metric ton is water for reaction mass. (Launch laser proposals work by boiling water using external power, not by light pressure.) So that's not promising. Tethers, skyhooks, etc. all require a huge lift-to-orbit capability before you can build one, if it's even possible with real materials.

So we're stuck here, unless maybe somebody finally makes fusion work.

Re:Space travel isn't feasible

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree, nothing you mention is really new. We need something new.

NASA gets about 0.6% of the national budget......

[Ellis D. Tripp]

, so even if we completely eliminated it, we still wouldn't be able to make a dent in the problems of health care and a living wage.

OTOH, if we cut a couple hundred billion from the Pentagon budget every year, we could have national health care AND a base on Mars....

"Use the budget for solving world's problems"

[ardor]

I keep hearing this, and it is still nonsense. The space program is damn CHEAP compared to our other spendings. Just check out the military funds for one hell of a money sink. Americans even spend more money for fast food.

Cut the funds for weapons research. You get hundreds of billions easily this way. By destroying NASA, you get maybe 10-20, and lose one of the few federal departments that make some sense.

That's not to say that NASA is without problems. NASA is a slug, inefficient, aging, and a good example of bureaucracy gone haywire. Still, closing it would have very little, if any, impact on those "world problems". Half of these problems originate from ideological madness; you can throw any amount of money at them, they won't go away.

But I agree on something else: put the manned spaceflight on the backburner, don't rush things. Concentrate on materials research, especially nanotubes, their properties in zero-G environment, and especially how well they shield cosmic radiation.

I'd transfer the trillions that are wasted on the US wars to research of new energy sources. This solves lots of problems on earth (dependence of oil, which has very real political problems, climate issues) AND helps the space program as well, because the no.1 issue with space exploration IS energy. If we had the energy source, we COULD lift ships from the ground as big as the Nimitz.

It's not my money

[TapeCutter]

I'm an Aussie and just qualify as a baby boomer (1959), the moon-landing grabbed peoples attention the world over in the opposite way to 911 (except the Eastern bloc), every kid wanted to be an astronaught. Problem now is "it's been done" and ICBM's that can hit a gnat between the eyes from 12,000 miles away are "ho-hum".

I'm glad I was paying attention as a 10yro at that point in history but now I'm older I appreciate NASA for the "Great Observatories" project, of which Hubble was part. I also appreciate their landsat type missions and the interplanetary probes they send out every now and then, and to give the military side of things credit where it's due - let's not forget GPS.

/tinfoil-hat
From what I read, the current occupants of the Whitehouse have gutted these budgets in favour of the man on Mars "pipe dream". I get the idea that the "dream" was to hinder the flow of acurate environmental data concerning our own planet, or perhaps it's just a personal vendetta against a man who stubbornly speaks truth to power. Whatever it is, it's not motivated by a GWB Duck Dogers fantasy, nor does it appeal to this particular baby-boomer/flower-child.
/tinfoil-hat

They could declare the cold war over and let the space station die a natural death. The only role left for humans is the space shuttle missions, either they could design robots to replace them in these tasks (and spur a bit of tech), or maybe save all that shuttle infrastructure money and simply claim dud missions on insurance and send up a replacement observatory/probe instead of a repair crew.

I sympathise with the "put-up or privatise" argument but I fear the put-up option is a white elephant, and the privatise option would just create an orbiting Disneyland that will be created by the private market sooner or later anyway. From my POV I think politicians should provide stable policy and budget, scientific merit should provide the projects.

Anyway, thanks for over 40yrs of free food for my sense of awe at the universe. From my POV NASA's non-military arm really is one of modern man's greatest scientific institutions, akin to the great library of Alexandria in it's time. It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater but at the end of the day, it's your baby.

Not quite

[MarkusQ]

The market discounts all future cash flow -- near and long term -- by an appropriate discount (risk) factor.

Not quite. The market discounts future cash flow by a factor based on the estimate of the risk. Humans are notoriously bad at doing such calculations often being off by orders of magnitude in either direction once you enter the realm of big consequences and low probabilities. People buy lottery tickets, will walk in the middle of the street at night during a rain storm (presumably because the trees along the sides of the road increase your chance of getting hit by lightning), invest huge amounts of money in companies that sell dog food over the internet and so on.

Space exploitation is risky, yes, but the risks are, objectively, dwarfed by the rewards. The market is simply failing to properly weigh the risks and the benefits.

For just one example, consider the fact that sending a couple of dozen people to the moon in the 60s (including developing much of the technology and building much of the infrastructure from scratch) cost roughly $100B in today's dollars, or less than 20% of what the Iraq war has cost. In addition, the Apollo program gave us a huge number of ancillary benefits and made subsequent operations (e.g. Skylab much cheaper). Putting an amount of effort (money, mandate, and manpower) less than what we've sunk into Iraqi (and with substantially lower loss of life) into space-based solar power would get us complete independence from foreign oil, go a long way towards solving global warming, and probably have huge side benefits that we can't even conceive of yet. Given the facts, it would seem a no brainer to support such a program if it weren't for the human tendency to grossly misestimate risks. But a handful of astronauts dying spectacularly on national television makes space exploitation seem far riskier (at an emotional level at least) than thousands of people dying quietly in a war somewhere. So we go for the more expensive, more dangerous plan with the lower payoff based on a flawed risk assessment.

--MarkusQ

Re:Not quite

[ThreeE]

You justify one huge govt program by saying it made another one cheaper...

Everyone talks about the vague benefits of the Apollo program, but no one really knows what they are. When they do give specifics, they turn out to be independently developed. At a minimum, it would have been more effective to just develop the technologies directly.

Thanks for the Cool Link

[aquatone282]

From the Project Orion wikipedia page:

The smallest 4000 ton model planned for ground launch from Jackass Flats, Nevada had each blast add 30 mph (50 km/h) to the craft's velocity. A graphite based oil was to be sprayed on the pusher plate before each explosion to prevent ablation of the pusher plate. This sequence would be repeated thousands of times, like an atomic pogo stick.

I can be your advocate

[kipman725]

We must get off this rock because if our asumptions about life on other planets are correct it's resnoable to assume that they also have inteligence and are also making the first steps (AT LEAST) into space. Eventualy these lifeforms will start to colonise... do you want to be the backwards miners or the federation?

Several advocacy groups

[ke4roh]

There are actually quite a few advocacy groups:

• http://www.planetary.org/home/ The Planetary Society
  
• http://www.marssociety.org/ The Mars Society
  
• http://www.nss.org/ The National Space Society
  
• http://www.seds.org/ Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
  
• http://www.space-frontier.org/ Space Frontier Foundation
  

Coming up is a conference where many of the space advocates will convene - so to answer the question directly, they will be in Washington, D.C. the end of this month: http://www.isdc2008.org/

There are several commercial interests, including the Artemis Society, http://www.asi.org/ and http://www.virgingalactic.com/

MWDs?

[ghjm]

What are MWDs? Mega Weapons of Death?

And how is it "irresponsible and dangerous" to allow someone else to have space superiority? Is it that only we are smart and moral enough to be trusted with it? What quality of ours is it that makes us smart and moral, and everyone else evil and dumb? How did this quality become absent at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, etc? If it is possible for us to lose this quality, is it also possible for someone else to gain it? If that happened, would it then become "irresponsible and dangerous" for that someone else to fail to maintain space superiority over us?

Also, how do you "park" someting in LEO?

-Graham

Re:MWDs?

[Alzheimers]

And how is it "irresponsible and dangerous" to allow someone else to have space superiority? Is it that only we are smart and moral enough to be trusted with it?

While the US certainly haven't had the greatest track record when it comes to dictating morality to the rest of the world, there are others who have done a lot worse with the power they've had. As a member of the home team, I would much rather it fall to our responsibility to maintain order than to rely on another nation that has very different interests to serve.

Re:MWDs?

[Dragonslicer]

Also, how do you "park" someting in LEO? I would say that geosynchronous orbit is effectively "parking".

Re:MWDs?

[rk]

And geosynchronous orbit isn't LEO, either. It's an order of magnitude larger than LEO.

Re:MWDs?

[Grishnakh]

I think our track record is mediocre at best. It used to be a lot better, but then new generations took over and we got Vietnam, the 70s, and now Iraq and Abu Graib.

I think we should allow Canada to dictate morality to the rest of the world, or maybe even Sweden. They'd certainly do better than us. Just as long as it's not any country in Africa or the Middle East.

Old Space Advocates Realize the Country is BROKE

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because those of us who've been in it for a while, after reviewing the past 8 years of the USA's budget, realized something.

The USA is broke, to the tune of at least 59.1 TRILLION DOLLARS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Only 5.3 trillion of that is what we "supposedly" owe ourselves.

This can't go on for much longer. In fact, the drop in foreigners purchasing US treasury bonds is a show of no confidence in the USA.

That's why we're no longer concerned about the Space Program. We're more concerned about our descent to 3rd, or even 4th world conditions.

One right here! Here's why...

[Waste55]

I may be the odd man out here by supporting space & NASA (I work Orion CEV, though not a civil servant) while also being a slashdot user, but I still stand by my beliefs.

I will first start by providing a handful of links to other advocate groups, spin-off pages, etc., then go into why I personally support it, and finally go into where I see room for improvements.

The Links
The Planetary Society
The Coalition for Space Exploration
Space.com
NASA Spin-off Library
NASA @ Home and City

Now on to why I personally support manned space: I will try to keep it short and high-level. (No particular order to the numbering)

1. Study of survival in harsh environments.
I both fear & assume that one day our planet will eventually become an extremely harsh environment to survive in. I feel that the more we know about biology and microbiology issues such as water & food purification (ISS, Shuttle Purification, Water and Food Analytical Laboratory (WAFAL)) within limited and harsh environments, the better off we could be when we reach that time in our existence. (There are also many other areas of study that go along with survival than life sciences, such as human physiology.)

2. Colonization of other moons and planets.
Essentially this goes along with #1. It would be nice to have some options and prior knowledge when Earth is nearing its end.

3. Origin of our Planets.
I believe the more we know and understand about the origin of our planets the better. If we can somehow "prove" our origin and debunk the majority of Religious views I feel we will be better off. I believe Religion to be the root cause of the majority of wars and violence on this planet. I also believe that people who are barley surviving often resort to violence to help themselves survive.

4. Costs vs Return.
Here I'm just going to sum-up this page. NASA's budget is 0.7 of 1% of the nations total. We spend about $9 Billion per month killing other humans. "In 2002, the commercial space industry contributed more than $95 billion in U.S. economic activity".

4.Spin-Offs.
While it may be a sub-set of the other advantages, I still believe the majority of Spin-offs benefit humans "down here".


Where can we improve?
(Again, no particular order)

1. Public Relations.
I believe the public needs more knowledge coming from the space community about both the benefits and obstacles of space exploration. I believe many of the reasons people have a negative attitude about it is because they are ill-informed. Stop playing with space food on TV and making everything look like a cake-walk, and show the real low-level experiments being ran up there. THIS is what will inspire people!

2. Inspire our Youth.
Again, this goes along with #1. With politicians trying to get more math and science students just by cutting funds here, adding funds there (Obama, I'm looking at YOU), you still won't be motivating people to work hard and study these subjects. The one thing that actually got me (mentally) through college was my goal of working on the space program. With no motivation and inspiration, you will loose students in these subjects, not gain them!

3. Expand Robotic\Un-manned Space.
I believe that expanding our robotic side of space exploration will have an overall benefit, but needs to co-exist with the manned

Re:One right here! Here's why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up please. Insightful post with useful links; well worth the time to read it, and as a worker in the field of space research, his knowledge is very useful.

Project oriion will restart when we are back on ..

[WindBourne]

the moon. The reason is that Uranium has been found there. It is expected that a LOT more is there. Once we get there and find more, then we will restart the program. Keep in mind that the whole reason why nukes in space was stopped was due to possibility of launch failure. Now, the problem is gone.

Focus

[Pig Hogger]

The focus should be on the real bottom-line issue: cheap high-volume access to Earth orbit.

Once you're out of the gravity well, everything will fall into place, and the wealth gained will be beyond the wildest dreams.

History

[WindBourne]

All of frontier expansions occur because of conflict between nations. The biggest conflicts, in recent history, was Spain vs. France vs Britain. They built great ships to take on each other. When they found that they could use these fund their navy's, then they continued outwards. The same will happen again.

Re:History

[hobo sapiens]

except that the barrier to space exploration is much higher than the barrier to floating on the ocean. Any moron crazy enough to try could string together some logs and sail about anywhere (not saying it's wise or advisable...merely possible.) You cannot say the same thing about space exploration.

Science Debate 2008

[countSudoku()]

Scientists & Engineers for America: http://sefora.org/

Sciencedebate 2008: http://sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php

Space exploration and the sciences needs better representation in the lawyer-heavy political system. We need more math and science in the schools and people in office who understand the importance of such for the future of our country. Support your local (or state or fed) science-minded candidates. Thank you.

space vs social spending

[SpacePunk]

There you go folks. The subject says it all. The growth and demand of social spending will make it impossible to commit resources to space exploration and growth to the point where humanity will eventually die choking on it's own piss and vomit. Space advocates are relegated to the same status of Ron Paul supporters.

Nuts

[MarkusQ]

Everyone talks about the vague benefits of the Apollo program, but no one really knows what they are. When they do give specifics, they turn out to be independently developed. At a minimum, it would have been more effective to just develop the technologies directly.

Nuts. That's not how technology works. We conceptually divide R & D into an R-part and a D-part for a reason. As the old saying goes, if you know what you are trying to accomplish, how long it will take, or what it will cost, you aren't doing research. Research is a process of filling in the gaps in your knowledge, figuring out how the piece fit, and in general pursuing knowledge directly.

But eventually, in any given area, this process winds down and stops.

That's where the development part comes in. It is the mirror image of research, the logical complement in which you take what you've learned and try to apply it to some concrete goal. By it's very nature it can't be done without some sort of goal (more typically, thousands of interrelated goals), any more than you can become a concert pianist without ever sitting down trying to play some specific piece of music.

Science comes out of the former, and technology comes out of the later. Both have their special needs, rewards, and limitations. In this case of technology, which is what we call the results of trying to apply some sort of science to accomplish some goal, these needs include a) some science, and b) a goal.

To drive this point home, can you name one single significant technology that was ever, in the whole course of history, developed directly by some person or group of people who weren't trying to accomplish some goal?

--MarkusQ

Re:Nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

Research and Development can usually be mirrored nicely as science and engineering.

Agreed

[MarkusQ]

Research and Development can usually be mirrored nicely as science and engineering.

Agreed. My point is that, while you can do science without knowing what it is you are studying, it is essentially impossible to do engineering this way. No one in the real world builds something and then turns it on with a dramatic flourish to find out what they've invented.

--MarkusQ

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you be referring to the Republicans who banned stem-cell research or to the ones working constantly to get evolutionary biology removed from high-school curricula?

Space is more important than the poor.

[tjstork]

No, I just want to go FORWARD to universal health care, more aid for impoverished nations, and all the other stuff we could be funding ahead of Joe Boomer's dreams of a Flash Gordon future.

Dude, that's ridiculous. There's always going to be poor, no matter what you do. Pandering to the losers in society is one thing, but dragging a whole nation down because of it is another. Poor people get enough. It's time that this nation build things for the advancement of those who actually have talent to inspire the same out of those in the next generation. You can't always be looking behind. You have to look ahead.

I'd cut welfare spending, and double NASA's budget.

Screw the poor, and the third world.

Re:Space is more important than the poor.

[bob_herrick]

I don't wish to derail this thread (I imagine I am too late anway), but you do know that those 'poor' folks already get medical care, just at extremely expensive rates. And you probably ought to give some thought to just how many people are 'poor' in health care cost terms, and if they are truly 'losers.' Someday soon it may be your parents that are 'poor,' and some day in the distant future, it may be you as well.

Open Source Space

[the_kanzure]

There are a number of open source groups that are interested in going forward with spacetech. This isn't your typical NSS, L5, Mars Soc., or other "write to your representatives" ordeal - this is more like the NewSpace groups - Google Lunar X Prize teams (Interplanetary Ventures, Team FREDNET, Team Cringely, etc.).

One of the projects I am participating in is a free / open source manufacturing system, a repository of models and manufacturing instructions ("fabhat" like redhat), geared towards space exploration. An explanation can be found here and here, with a mailing list accessible from here. We're on freenode in #hplusroadmap (see this for help). Hope some Slashdotters will show up. :-)

There are other groups out there, so if you want a huge list, try my linkdump, and also see OpenVirgle -- an offshoot of Google's Project Virgle.

What started as an April Fool joke by Google for 2008 called Project Virgle is now a real and genuine effort by an increasing number of people to create ideas and ways in which humankind can live sustainably in space using free and open source technology. This project is a place for all space enthusiasts to cooperate on simulations of space settlements. Rather than argue whether L5 or Mars or the asteroids or the Moon or the rings of Saturn should be humankind's first space settlement, we could be asking what is common between those efforts so that that groundwork can be shared.

So no longer is "space advocacy" is enough. You have to actually do it for it to count at all. Btw, for anybody interested, the manufacturing system is based off of debian apt (apt-get install, but for spacetech) and gentoo portage and other repository systems. Technically it's just git, but with elements of the semantic web sprinkled in. A physical "grounding" of the semantic web so that we can assemble the massive amounts of information on the net and apply it towards various goals -- space habitats, von Neumann probes, astrochickens, sugar rockets, but also other non-space based systems (which will eventually be required anyway). To demonstrate the system (dubbed OSCOMAK, SKDB, sometimes metarepo), we're starting with origami instructions. Something sufficiently simple. :-)

OSCOMAK:

The OSCOMAK project will foster a community in which many interested individuals will contribute to the creation of a distributed global repository of manufacturing knowledge about past, present and future processes, materials, and products. OSCOMAK stands for "OSCOMAK Semantic Community On Manufactured Artifacts and Know-how".

- Bryan

the barriers were worse back then

[WindBourne]

The survivability of a good storm was minimal. Worse, these folks were sailing into uncharted waters. Most thought they were headed off of the edge of the earth. Literally. As to the old garbage about having everything you need, not even close. The men got scurvy due to lack of fresh food (which is why brits are called limeys) and many ships died of dehydration due to running out of fresh water.

But the real problem then, as now, is lack of money. We have limited amounts of money to pursue this and all of our ideas. That is actually where capitalism shines. It allows multiple approaches and different interest. Of course, it tends to mean that we have a lot of waste. The simple fact is that royalty had to be convinced of this for it to happen. And it took a century to find the right one. Now, private industry is heading back to the moon within another 6 years. But it will be ~50 years since we went to the moon. That is still a long time. But this is still far easier than what Europe (and all those that proceeded them such as khan, china, Alexander, etc. who conquered, but also explored) did so many centuries/millenniums ago.

Re:the barriers were worse back then

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure what kind of logic you're using, but the barriers in no conceivable way were "worse" back then. You didn't even need a boat, people have been capable of *swimming* a couple of miles for thousands of years. How many miles can a self-propeled craft go straight up into the air today?

Re:the barriers were worse back then

[mdwh2]

How many miles can a self-propeled craft go straight up into the air today?

I'll tell you want - when you find me someone who can swim across the world's oceans, I'll find you someone who can jump into space.

Correcting misconceptions about US rail service.

[tjstork]

It acted as a subsidy for long-haul trucking, and completely screwed up rail transit, despite the fact that rail is much more energy efficient. (But who cares about that these days, eh?)

Long haul trucking accounts for a fraction of all freight shipped within the USA. Right now, freight is nearly 90% shipped by rail in the USA. It's a staggering amount of stuff that is shipped by train. Trucking is really only where railroads don't go. For long stuff, the big stuff, rail is the king and still is.

The thing is, passenger rail transit was already in trouble in the USA largely because it was never really profitable to do it, and the various railway acts made passenger traffic unpopular even with the railroads. Freight rail is popular and profitable. People rail is neither. Service even in the golden age of rail - immediately post war, was actually pretty horrible as there was not enough money to keep the rolling stock, well, rolling, and service degraded. To some extent, the shoddiness of the rail service actually lead people to drive cars.

In fact, you can even see this empirically. In 1982, Philadelphia's SEPTA regional rails supported a pretty good passenger base, but a large rail strike basically pushed people into alternative modes of transport, from which, SEPTA hasn't recovered from until -this year-. Similarly, while AMTRAK still has yet to turn a profit, (and probably never will), Conrail, AMTRAK's freight cousin, not only got off of the government dole in fairly short order in what was the then largest IPO in US history, but is now very profitable for all involved.

I should note, as well, that many American cities actually have laws on their books that essentially drove the railroad's out. NYC, for example, forced out all the big engines because of noise and air quality concerns, and most other northeastern cities followed suit. They thought they would force electrification, which, they did to a certain extent, but even more so, what they got was an end to rail service, and more cars.

It also inspired a fad for "moving to the country" (i.e. the creation of suburban sprawl), which cut the knees out from under the urban tax base, and created a generation of American's who are nearly incapable of any physical exercise, and have a very weak sense of community.

Cities suck. That's the thing. City governments are bloated and corrupt and cities themselves are crowded and smell. People are animals and they like space. No species in their right mind crowds itself.

I would argue that people supported the construction of highways, so that they -could- get to the suburbs more quickly, not the other way around.

Everyone I know is stupid.

[bluefoxlucid]

Everyone I know is stupid and doesn't know jack shit about economics, or anything for that matter. When it comes to space exploration, it's "a waste when we should spend more on (socialized health care|schools|feeding the hungry|etc)."

For me space exploration fills the need to get the hell off this planet before a mass extinction event occurs (say, Yellowstone Caldera erupting); but it also has a massive economic and technological effect. NASA asks for shit nobody else will ask for (yet); companies thus have to hire creative engineers to solve problems nobody wants to solve, and then suddenly we have new technology. New technology is so useless, it does nothing; so these companies now try desperately to find a use for it outside NASA so they can market it to consumers to make money. Now we have consumer products nobody would have thought of before.... (try this, thank Google: http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html)

Think inside the box, or inside the box, or on top of the box, or blow the fucking box up and think on your own. Don't look at X and think it means only X; space exploration is a damn important driving force for both the economy and technological advancement in general.

Where Are We?

[DynaSoar]

First I have to say "Space Advocates showed up on Slashdot today, and asked 'Who is The Space Show'?" It's not a frivolous question. I've been an advocate for 40 years and never heard of it before.

If the show and its owner were very well connected, they'd know that those who remain advocating space programs through the traditional channels are most often those scientists and such whose work depends on it or is planned to. Many of the rest of us have been abandoning advocacy of the corporate welfare system of NASA + BigAerospace for the more exciting private space start ups. Sure, the successful ones will end up as major aerospace players and/or sell out to bigger companies, but they'll make their early money and marks in history the old fashioned way. Even the US government has made success more likely for these start ups by making the Office of Space Transportation easy to work through, and even obtain assistance from when planning flights.

Bottom line, ((bi)partisan) politics hasn't favored us since about 1970, so we've quit waiting for that happy childhood to return. Keep your candidates. We'll be busy punching holes in the sky.

And it should be noted that the referenced source seems to imply, by tying the question to the present US elections, that space programs and advocacy exist only in the US. Very wrong. Another strike against The Space Show.

Plenty of advocates.

[Rocketman_Ryan]

There are plenty of people advocating for space exploration, both manned and otherwise (myself among them!): http://www.spacecoalition.com/ http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/www/index.php, http://marsproject.com/, http://www.seti.org/, http://www.committee4spaceadvocacy.org/, http://www.planetary.org/home/ People are advocating. The problem is that no one is listening. Our country has been deaf to the benefits of space research for 20 years now, and it's not going to change. It's only going to get worse as our kids get dumber and stop getting math, science, and engineering degrees. Is my generation going to be the last to take a shot at it? I sure hope not. But unless it gets some serious attention, and soon, the United States is finished as a space-faring nation.

Human exploration or machine exploration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly, I don't believe much has been achieved by putting people into space during the past 20 years, but the costs are enormous (around $1 billion per shuttle mission). Most scientific investigations need more than just a couple weeks of data. The space station is a scientific wasteland but will cost well over $100 billion. Much of NASA's money goes just toward completing the space station, but scientists don't really care about it. Most of the science is just self supporting, i.e. if we're in space, what are the effects. I don't see why so many people get excited about putting humans in space.

On the other hand, putting machines (satellites and rovers) into space is much cheaper and actually produces scientific results. So when people talk about space exploration, they should be more specific about whether they mean putting people into space (expensive and useless) or doing science, because generally, you don't get both.

As for inspiring the young to go into science and math, the problem is those jobs don't pay the big bucks. For less time in school, you can get a business or law degree and get paid more. And now physicists are going to wall street where they'll get obscene amounts of money. There is an incentive problem we're dealing with.

Let me see if Understand this right.

[WindBourne]

You are suggesting that you could be stranded in the middle of an ocean with no food, no water, just swimming, and you think that you would do ok? Traveling the world back in 1500-1800 was DANGEROUS. Far more than what it is today. In late 1700, Captain Cook sailed the oceans for 3 years and lost 40 out of his 100 crew; That is 40% of his crew. And that was considered low. And you think that the ability to swim a couple of miles will help you? Hell, I did that as a 9 y.o. back in the 60's. And I can tell you that it would not help me to survive on my own in the ocean in the 20's, let alone in the 1700's. If you were lost at sea in 1700, you were DEAD.

Re:Wha?

[bluefoxlucid]

Clinton banned embryonic stem cell research; Bush barely allowed such research, under strict rules, and with little federal money (the NIH supplies most of the money for this type of research).

By the same token, embryonic stem cell research has no future except for expensive, complex, meaningless experiments; while adult stem cell research has actual medical promise and current day results (most people who have had cancer treatment should be familiar with one such application that makes chemotherapy possible...)

Robots, not Dudes

[Tablizer]

As someone who is extremely skeptical myself of the value of space exploration, ...

Robotic exploration is a great scientific bargain. Manned missions, on the other hand, are giant cash vacuums. For example, wouldn't it make sense to learn more about the composition and origin of meteorites and/or comets of the type that punked the dinosaurs? Otherwise, we may end up with the same fate.

Orion is outmoded thinking

[snowwrestler]

Orion was all about paying a big price to lift a big mass. But why would we need to lift a big mass? There is no shortage of mass or raw materials in the solar system. What we need to lift are expertise and technology. But we need to do small-scale R&D to develop both, and that is our mission now. That is where we are in our development.

We should think of the future of manned spaceflight more like manned von Neumann probes than building airlines or cruise ships. Those will come much later. Europe did not bring their raw materials and mass to the Americas. They brought only enough to get them there, and did the rest by applying their expertise and technology to the local raw materials. It was only much later that reliable, high-mass, high-speed transportation was possible between the continents.

Granted we are speaking of much higher orders of both when we're talking about living on the moon or Mars. But the realities of the development cycle still apply. In fact--screw the Europe analogy. We are more like early Asians, developing the first ocean-going dugout canoes as they explored Micronesia.

Re:Correcting misconceptions about US rail service

[doom]

Cities suck. That's the thing.

Yes, that would explain the high rents and housing prices in New York and San Francisco. Human beings just hate being near each other. God meant us to seal ourselves up inside of metal cages and avoid contact with our neighbors.

I'll do that....

[Ellis D. Tripp]

after all, Nader or or no Nader, if the Dems can't win by a frickin' landslide after 8 years of piss-poor GOP leadership, an illegal, unpopular war, and an economy in the toilet, maybe it's time for THEM to hang it up and let a REAL opposition party have a chance.

Have fun voting Obama with the rest of the sheep....

Re:Wha?

[jav1231]

Flamebait? Oh the leftists are upset...free speech is great when you say something they agree with. Priceless.

Re:Wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah! You must be one of the upset idiots. Just because they want ID taught along side of evolution doesn't mean they want evolution banned. You have a brain. You should use it for something other then making your head whistle.