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?

[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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, I ADVOCATE Space!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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